The Jasmine Star Show

What It Takes to Build a Skyscraper Business with Gary Vaynerchuck

• Jasmine Star

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 Feeling stuck digging without seeing results? You’re not alone, friend. In this episode, I share the behind-the-scenes journey of building my business from nothing—no connections, no funding, no experience. Plus, I reveal the mindset shifts that helped me pivot from photographer to CEO and my 1-on-1 convo with Gary Vaynerchuk about building my holding company. If you’re in the foundation phase, this is your reminder: you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Let’s build something incredible. 🚀 

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

[00:01] Why I almost didn’t say the word “skyscraper” aloud (and why I changed my mind)

[00:53] The deeper the foundation, the taller the structure

[01:49] How I built a six-figure business without a camera

[03:39] The moment I realized consulting was a “thing” (and how it changed my path)

[04:29] From courses to a membership to a tech company

[05:20] Starting a holding company (without knowing what a HoldCo was) (A masterclass in figuring things out while you build.)

[06:18] For the women building against the odds

[09:15] My conversation with Gary Vaynerchuck

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For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode548

Jasmine Star 00:00:00  I was always perpetually unqualified, unfunded and unconnected. And yet when I had an idea and I believed I wouldn't be given if an idea, if I didn't have the capacity to succeed. Which is why I look across and I tell you the very thing today. Have you ever wanted to get an inside look at a growing business? Have you ever wanted to be on the ground level and saw how the sausage was made? Have you ever wanted to be and get an insight on a business that, for all intents and purposes, has no reason to succeed? And yet it will. You've come to the right place. Welcome to the Jasmin Starr Show, where today we are putting you on the ground level of the thing that we are building. You want to know what I'm going to correct myself in my notes? Hand to heaven. It says ground level of the skyscraper. And do you want to know what I did? I didn't use the word skyscraper because I got a little caught up. I was like, no, don't say you're building a skyscraper, because what if you don't? And I'm like, don't say that because your words have power.

Jasmine Star 00:00:53  So I'm going to keep rolling with this and say, you're going to be on the ground floor of the skyscraper we are building. So how can I be so sure, even on the inside, when there's that little quiver of doubt? Well, one thing I know about skyscrapers is the taller the skyscraper, the deeper the foundation has to be. Can I say that again? The taller the skyscraper, the deeper the foundation has to be. I can look back at the last two years, two and a half years, and it has been 100% foundational work. There is nothing shiny on the outside. It doesn't look tall, and for all intents and purposes, it looks and feels like I'm digging a hole. And we are. But we're digging a hole that we're going to fill as the foundation. And so one of the things that I get nervous being so sure about, the thing that I'm building is my assurance has less to do with my ability to foresee my future, and a lot to do with if I just looked at the past.

Jasmine Star 00:01:49  And the past leaves clues. So as a brief recap in 2007, I said I wanted to become a photographer and I didn't own a camera. in the next 12 months. I built a $100,000 business, and two years after that became one of the top photographers in the world. My husband and business partner and I, we were being flown to most beautiful locations everywhere you can imagine and working with the most luxurious clients. We were shooting for magazines and we were being flown in to document some of these best day of their life. And so in that short time frame, I realized that I could say something that doesn't make sense. 2007 I wanted to become a photographer, and I didn't own a camera, and 2 or 3 short years later have multiple six figure revenue streams being flown around the world, being able to travel with my camera and a passport. And that became a dream come true for all intents and purposes. It shouldn't have succeeded. And then in 2010, I at the time was creating content for photographers and other photography companies, started asking me if I could create content for them.

Jasmine Star 00:02:53  I was creating content for their blogs and their websites, and I thought to myself, okay, this is great. I'm getting paid to write content that I would be writing anyway to help educate other photographers. So I had a revenue stream from photography, I had a revenue stream from content creation, and then about 2 or 3 years into doing that, I started realizing, I actually think that I don't want to trade my hours for dollars anymore. So I'm going to focus on the content that I'm creating. So I went to those companies and I said, you know, I think my time has come. I'm not going to be creating content for others. I'm just going to be creating for myself. And then they asked me, would you ever consider consulting? And at the time, I didn't even know what consulting was. Consulting is basically getting paid to teach other people what it is you do, and they go and deploy against. They go and do the work. And I was like, do you want to pay me to tell your marketing and brand teams what to do? And they said, yes.

Jasmine Star 00:03:39  And I said, okay. So I got paid by teaching their team on how to do the work. So I did that another few years. And so I went from a consultant in 2012. And in 2015 I debuted my very first digital course. I had no background creating a digital course. I didn't even know what I was doing. I just said, I'm going to record content and I'm going to put it out on the internet. And in ten minutes later, we had built out a seven figure revenue stream. So we had a revenue stream from photography. We had a revenue stream from photography education, we had a revenue stream from content, and we had a revenue stream from a digital course. And I had created and launched multiple digital courses, making a ton of mistakes along the way. And the one thing we heard from people again and again was they wanted continuity. And so instead of a course, they asked us to create a membership. I said, no, I don't want to create a membership.

Jasmine Star 00:04:29  I don't know how to create a membership. And yet we created a membership. This is 2017. And the thing we heard once we were on the inside of the membership is that people wanted to take their marketing content, that they were learning and putting it out on the largest social platforms like TikTok, like Instagram, like Facebook. And I thought to myself, in order for us to do that, we have to integrate with all of these social platforms. But in order to integrate, we needed our own tech stack. So I don't know a single line of code. I don't even know how to attract talent. And yet we found a way to hire a CTO to build our own tech stack, and we became a bona fide SaaS company in 2021. And so much so that I started getting a lot of experience. And other SaaS founders started asking me to speak into their businesses. And I thought to myself, I think I've learned a few things when it comes to marketing, branding, and technology.

Jasmine Star 00:05:20  And it put me in this random, beautiful, amazing, sweet spot so that in 2023, my husband and I began our holding company. I didn't even know what a holding company was until 2023. I had this vision that I was going to. I kept on saying like this octopus, like this thing, like this big company above. And then we were going to have businesses underneath that. And it was in January of 2023 where somebody looked across at me and said, oh, that's called a Holdco. And so the common theme when I look back at my career is that I had no idea what I was doing. I was always perpetually unqualified, unfunded and unconnected. And yet when I had an idea and I believed I wouldn't be given an idea if I didn't have the capacity to succeed. Which is why I look across and I tell you the very thing today you would not be given the idea if it wasn't in you to already succeed. So the common theme was being wildly unqualified. And then also in parallel was another common theme of figuring out and finding a way to make it a success.

Jasmine Star 00:06:18  So when people ask Jasmine, are you really building a skyscraper? And I'm like, well, right now I'm building a foundation to build a very big skyscraper. Other people say, I'm digging myself a hole, and I just say, well, wait till you see the thing that we're building. So when I look back at the thing that we've built, I feel two really big things. I feel very humbled. I am a first generation Latina. I'm the first generation college grad. I am a female founder, which is a very rare thing. Only 4% of business owners in the United States will ever cross seven figures, 4% to be part of that 4%, but even more specifically to be a female Founder of color that is less than 0.5%. So I feel very humbled that on the back of bootstrapping and on the back of doing everything wrong a thousand times over, we were able to cross that mark. I also find a deep sense of pride not for the things that we've built, but the fact that we didn't quit.

Jasmine Star 00:07:13  And I'm actually going to change it from we to I. My husband is my co-founder and business partner and he never wanted to quit. I did a lot of times, like definitely times crying on the bathroom floor, trying to figure out, like, what am I doing? Like, why did I sign up for this madness? Like, could I not have chosen a different path? Crying those tears on the bathroom floor. 2020 2021 trying to figure it all out. I wanted to quit and I'm really happy that I didn't. It hasn't been easy, but it has been the most gratifying thing I have ever done in my life. I also want to say that we are in the baby stages of our holding company. I will tell you a thousand times before I am doing it wrong. I just want to be very clear. This video is not to watch somebody do it right. It is to watch me do it wrong and figure out how to get back up and share those mistakes with you so that you don't make them.

Jasmine Star 00:08:07  Today I'm going to be sharing the ups and downs that have happened from a recent conversation that I had with Gary Vaynerchuk. I joined an executive coaching program in 2024, and part of that program, I had the opportunity to talk with Gary. And the question that I asked for Gary was Gary. Well, actually, how would I not share the question? How about I cut away to that video right about now, 5 or 6 years ago, it was highlighted. I was so excited and still to this day, remain excited. And one of the things that I told you was how I was building social curator. And one of the things that you had said at the time was something along the lines of, oh, we thought about building that too. And I told you, oh, I'm so glad you didn't build it. I don't want to be in the game. Gary Vaynerchuk and then you said something that was a classic Gary joke, which was abundance, abundance. I hope you have competitors because it makes you better.

Jasmine Star 00:09:00  And I never forgot that piece of advice. And when I look back at that experience, the one question I didn't ask was, well, why didn't you build it? But that's not my question today, because shame on me for not asking that question then. But presently when I look at what you have built and I didn't even know the word holding company existed until 2023, and in my mind, I had this idea of something that I wanted to build. And then I'm now realizing that that is the very thing that you have built. And so knowing what you know now, would you have built the holding company, and if so, if you could go back, what would you do differently?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:09:38  Great question. Yes, I would definitely build it. I'm very good at being wide open and changing my mind in micros, but holding to a strategy in macro, I knew that I wanted to build the best marketing communications company in the world that was global and that I was open to it being a series of companies or a company, I was never going to be overly romantic about social media.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:10:01  I started this in oh nine. It's 24 or 15 years. I would have said, in 15 years, if no one's doing social, then we're doing whatever that thing is, and I continue to do that. So I wasn't romantic about what services we did, how many companies were in the entity if it was 1 or 100. More importantly, I was romantic about being always current. What's unique about my career is from 2006 to today. There's not a lot of people who have 18 years of on the record publicly following the flows of innovation around attention and communication at the same level that I do. And that's really humbling and good.

Jasmine Star 00:10:40  What would you do differently?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:10:41  I would have probably hired more people with more experience from the industry earlier. So romantic of staying clean with my own intuitive ideas. I demonized people from the outside that did it the old way, and it probably wasted some time on simple things that it could have done by having people around. I mean, this is my biggest issue still to this day.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:11:04  I would have fired faster on people I knew weren't capable. It's a real disease of mine. I'm such a bleeding heart. It's just not good for business. And it's not good for them. Like, because it leads to nepotism and resentment and it never ends up good anyway. I fired them eventually anyway.

Jasmine Star 00:11:24  Patience that I had with Andrea, and I was asking, how did you caught her to come in to dinner? And I think that early on, like now, looking at what Vayner is, it is a formidable force in the industry. But at the time I looked at myself and I know that I want to hire people with experience, but they have optionality but was like a key factor. Could you go back and say, identify the pattern?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:11:43  I think you'll be able to convince people to do it. How did I do it? By being okay with all the people that didn't see it in the same way I did it when I was a boy. Every girl that I thought was cute, that didn't want to be with me.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:11:54  In my mind, I was like, they're going to be really sad one day.

Jasmine Star 00:11:57  And oh, are they?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:12:00  So I think you need to take the same approach with this business. You're going to identify someone and you want Ricky Thompson and he's going to say no. And then literally you're like, cool, next.

Jasmine Star 00:12:12  Who should I be talking to? Who should I be aligning to? Not in regards to building a holding company that looks like your ex. Anybody with the idea of holding companies. Because what I want to do is I'm not the best at coming up with new ideas, but I'm really good at spotting patterns and then identifying for my strengths and building from there. So when you look at people who have successfully built holding companies out inside or outside of your industry, who's the formidable leader or somebody who's creating content, who is the person that I can learn from?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:12:37  That's an interesting question. Private equity firms, talent agencies CAA, UTA, WME. Dig into those two worlds private equity and talent representation.

Jasmine Star 00:12:49  If you are building Venus again and you had nothing. What would you be doing differently or the same that you did? You look back at yourself and you're like, damn, that was pretty incredible. Or even when I had nothing, I could have leveraged it in a different way.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:13:01  It was today. It's pretty easy for me to answer. I still want to build the same thing, which is in several years. I want this to be this huge conglomerate. What I would do is I would have different services, right? I would be focusing on I right now focus on on things that are of the moment that people don't have figured out that I could build on top of.

Jasmine Star 00:13:19  When we were meeting in Vive and we had lunch, and you and Mona graciously hosted us, you had said something that I am still trying to wrap my mind around, and I was just like, what you essentially said was, are you going to pick up what I'm putting down? And you talked about acquiring a company like Cracker Jacks for Snapple and taking it from a $40 million company that was once like a behemoth, and then you turned it into a $400 million company based on the principles of people who are actually getting what it is that you're trying to inculcate the currency with.

Jasmine Star 00:13:48  So there's like it felt like you're drawing a clear line in the sand of people who get it, and then those who don't and the people who get it are going to go on to this next iteration. And to me, I felt like, are you building a holding company specifically for that, or would you just not start focusing on that acquisition? And does the team know that culturally.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:14:04  The team knows people like James and Andrea and other senior leaders? That my goal with being or Acts is to build a holding company that is the best marketing company in the world, then anoint an active CEO and stay on as chairman, and then go build a either private equity firm or a holding company of brands and build that company, and then take the best players from banner X over to the owned and operated businesses from services to own.

Jasmine Star 00:14:33  And that's been very open in the organization.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:14:36  Yes, it's actually probably been very inspiring to the best players because they are like self-selecting, like I'm going to be the best and I'm going to go over to Snapple or Reebok when Gary buys it.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:14:47  That's one of the reasons I do believe the 1% of 1% here are probably here because of that.

Jasmine Star 00:14:53  Yeah. How are you identifying your 1%?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:14:56  I'm in the trenches every day. I'm in freaking. I love this life. That's why I'm in the trenches. It's almost like my Navy Seal. This is an army. But I'm going to need my Navy Seals when I go. And I'm not willing to guess.

Jasmine Star 00:15:10  It's crazy because when I hear that if I was working there I would self-select and be like, it's boot camp. So I wonder if that is part of the culture, because you know how you build, like you build, you attract more with honey. And so I was like, you come from this, honey. But then there's also like, there's this really sharp edge to what it is that you're doing in the balance of the two as a leader has been really inspiring. And so I wasn't sure how transparent you were with your team being like, oh, we're a honeycomb. But make no mistake.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:15:37  Honey Empire, you've heard it, you know, here.

Jasmine Star 00:15:41  But within the Empire, what you're saying is also as a leader is this This honeycomb is not going to be the honeycomb that I. That is the next thing that I built.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:15:50  To your point, this is just a proxy to the bigger empire. This is like step one, but is the operating system that gets me to step two.

Jasmine Star 00:16:00  And you've been transparent with everybody in the organization saying that, and you're unafraid to say those types of things.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:16:05  Just even crazier. I've literally said things like if I ever, God forbid, self interacts because that's clearly, as you can tell, not the plan. The next day, I'm going to be speaking to all of you with the Enquirer, and I'm going to tell you it's going to be great, and I'm here for the next three years and like, we're going to kill it. And Sally is the first person I've ever met that's just like me. And we got this. Literally none of you should believe this.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:16:35  And I'm telling you all this right now. The next day, you should all quit. I'm very real with people on it.

Jasmine Star 00:16:40  So empowering for me to see. And it's really invigorating because I want to be that transparent with my team. And so I don't want to have myself a false narrative. And I see you do it and it's positive and it's successful. And then you have somebody who's literally keeping on the call being like truth facts, giving you an amen. That's exactly the culture this has been, so, so, so helpful. Are there any other rooms that you would recommend that I be in or people I should be talking to?

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:17:07  You're going to be in Miami for the vibe thing coming up. Do you know about this?

Jasmine Star 00:17:10  No. I'll be in LA for VidCon and then in New Mexico for the in-person event. But if you're adding something in Miami, just say less.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:17:16  I think we are. I think we're doing a ribbon cutting in September or October of the Miami office for painter X, that I think is going to be a part of it.

Gary Vaynerchuk 00:17:24  That's at least what I heard this morning. So if it's not on your radar yet, then maybe they're adding it as an extra value, which is amazing. But that setting is going to allow me to have more time to yap than than VidCon. And I was going to say, I'll give some time between now and then and give you more along the way.

Jasmine Star 00:17:41  That's above and beyond. It's not even expected. I went to the very first one, and so I'm happy that it's in my neck of the woods. I can't wait to be rooting for you at a distance and anytime I can be in your orbit. Thank you, thank you. This has been amazing. You guys have a great day. Okay, so to keep things as simple as possible, I will share with you the three main takeaways that we took. And then I'll give you an update on each of them. Like I said, I'm putting you on the ground floor like you all might not be interested, but I'm creating this to document.

Jasmine Star 00:18:08  I am documenting this so that two months from now, two years from now, or 20 years from now, I look at this and I say, I'm so glad you didn't quit. So I asked Gary if you would do it over again, would you? And what changes would you make? And he said that he would have hired people with more experience. And in the last few months, I am really thrilled with the people who've joined our team. When I am on a leadership call, I will tell you that the thing I feel the most proud is like our managers, our directors, are saying how thankful they are to work with the people who we're working with. They have said things, and I wrote this down in a recent meeting. They had said. They just get it done when they're talking about the team. They just get it done. These are the leaders on our team talking about the team, saying they just get it done. They figure it out. They don't come to us and ask how they come to us with options and say, I've thought it.

Jasmine Star 00:18:58  How? What advice do you have based on here? It's a totally different vibe when you're working with somebody who has experience. And they had said things like, I just trust them. I trust that they're going to make the best decision with the information that they have. And so my biggest takeaway talking with Gary months ago, I think it was like 8 or 9 months ago now that he had that conversation to the people that were hiring, the vast difference when you come in with experience is really different. So the existing experience has put context into how they show up on our team. So they come in already with the skill set. Now we just have to make sure that they're a culture fit. And one of the things that we realized is that the people are hiring with experience. It's like they're doing the job of three people. They have been managers of other teams, and they're here saying, okay, I know what it's like to see it from a 360. Let me just jump in and let me get my hands dirty.

Jasmine Star 00:19:47  But let me also dream. So Gary calls it being in the clouds and in the dirt. The people are hiring with experience. They're in the clouds. And they're also having the humility to be in the dirt, which I think is so, so incredible. Number two, a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk. He said, I'm holding my mind in macros while moving in the micros. So big picture focus, small details, keeping the main thing the main thing. So he is taking big attention to his big vision and taking a lot of little tests. So before this conversation with Gary, I used to dread tests like test to me were I well, I need to have an outcome. So I'm going to plan it and I'm going to prep it. And then I overthought it like nobody has ever planned or prepped a test like your girl. And it became so heavy, it came so laborious, and it took so much time. If you have tests in your business that are taking you so much time, Let me tell you a better way.

Jasmine Star 00:20:42  Do it! Scrappy. Do it quick. The faster you get results is, the faster you get to make the changes that you need to move your business forward. So now, after that conversation with Gary, when he's just like, keep your head in the macros and your actions in the macros, it was all of a sudden like a flip switch. Like test test. Now test fast. We have to say that we're okay to have the guts to say this test doesn't have to work. In fact, the more tests that we do, it ultimately gets us closer to the end. Answer. Every test is a lesson. Now, what we do with those lessons is now use those lessons to point us closer to the big vision. So the macro is keeping us in line because of our micro. So these tiny tests are pointing us to ultimately the direction we want to go. So let's get into an example of this micro macro teaching. Okay, so the macro idea for the whole company is to own or partner with or have companies that share the same ideal client.

Jasmine Star 00:21:41  So as we are investing in growing and partnering with other companies, we want to make sure that we are all focused on serving the same person. Because what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be using my personal brand as leverage to build these other businesses. So if I'm investing and partnering and sitting as an advisor for these companies where I can share content, where I can share information, and it's a general flow to everybody in the Holdco, that's the big vision. Another thing that we want to do is we want to create synergies between the companies in our portfolio. So if, for instance, I have the opportunity to work with a company that's really looking to build community, I can connect them with a partnership that I have with member up. And so what I want to do is to make sure that the people we're serving are, yes, similar and beneficial. Use my personal brand as float and endorsements. In addition to sharing what it is I know, but also create synergy between the founders of those companies.

Jasmine Star 00:22:36  That's the macro. The macro has been laid out. Now the micro is carefully selecting advisory roles for the companies that I am pairing up with. I am very, very, very thankful to have opportunities to sit as an advisor for a company. It is an honour that I don't take lightly and it's not something that I say yes to. We have very high specific criteria around the companies that I am partnering with, in addition to the companies that I sit as an advisor role. So we had to first set parameters. What am I okay with? What am I not okay with? What is our goals? What are our ambitions? What is our growth path? What is our timeline? And even to be considered as somebody that I can partner with or sit as advisor. All of the parameters have to be met. That became a very hard and fast rule. And the goal here with this is does it point to the macro? Does any relationship, partnership or me sitting as an advisor, does it point to the macro? If it doesn't, then as difficult as it might be, I'm going to close it because not all opportunities are created equal.

Jasmine Star 00:23:35  So I'm asking for myself, Can I take this company or these relationships and can I turn it into more? That's part of the macro thinking. And then I have to have the humility to dig the micro test and actually start from the bottom up. So let's talk about an example even further. I had the opportunity to partner. It started off as an advisor role and then stepped into a partnership with member Up. So I started off as an advisor. And so I was advising Amy Sangster, the CEO. And part of this, we'd meet monthly and be talking about the strategy and what they're doing and what is scale. And I realized that she is an executor. She has a very clear vision. Her follow through was impeccable, and she has a humility to learn. The deeper I got in the business in the advisory role, I stepped forward and really took the honor of becoming an equity partner in the business because that points to the macro vision. Her company is going to point to the macro vision of the other businesses that are in our portfolio companies.

Jasmine Star 00:24:30  So I can't say too much about this particular time. I look forward to sharing it in the future. But currently, at the time of this recording, we're currently in negotiations with the partner in a really big way, and one of the things, one of the possible expansions of that company and where I would step in, would be expanding in a community role. And I thought to myself, because of my relationship with Amy and because I'm partnering in membership and because I love the platform and I love that she's building community, I have another opportunity to build a community. I know that if I point them to membership, they're going to get a white glove experience. They're literally going to be VIP, that they're going to have the direct ear to the CEO for feature request. We are going to be able to launch a massive company on that platform and serve them extra well. That happens when the micro is pointing to the macro. So one of the things that I'm also expanding in is as the personal brand, the personal brand, the personal brand as my personal brand as me, Jasmine, the human gets to meet with other people.

Jasmine Star 00:25:27  These are relationships that I can use and leverage as I grow the multitudes of our businesses. So, for example, a couple months ago I was invited to an event at Gloria Steinem house in the Upper East Side. Now she was there partnering with a few other female founders and investors. And when I was there, I was able to meet a lot of investors. And I'm talking about like capital letter bold, italicized investors. These are the types of investors who are writing multiple seven figure checks to one startup at a time. Also in the room were family offices that were run by females. And so a family office. They basically represent a family with a lot of wealth, and they control like their philanthropy and their investing. And so family offices are often looking for large scale investments that would scale. And so there's called multiple family offices like an MFO. So you get a bunch of wealthy families together and then you get their aggregate money. And you invest in a company like a tech company that has scale.

Jasmine Star 00:26:23  So you think of a family office or think of a multiple family office like a mini venture capital firm. And so I was in the room with these incredible people. Now I think to myself, I'm creating these relationships so that the companies who are sitting in are Holdco. Should they ever decide to fundraise? What am I going to do? I'm going to go into my personal Rolodex. I'm going to start calling and seeing if I can make introductions that would expedite the way that we create a win win win. The third thing that I learned from that Gary call is what I call will you pick up what I put down? Like, he literally on the call was telling me how he tells his team, I am building another company, and I'm not sure you're coming with me because I'm only taking the top 1%. I was like, whoa, that is crazy that he is talking about his other Holdco capacities, his other companies, and he's saying, I'm building a new one and you might not be there.

Jasmine Star 00:27:14  And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, can you speak so candidly? So after I recorded the vlog, I began to wonder, can Gary be unapologetic about that stance because of his success? Can he literally look at his team and say, I am building, and I'm not sure you're going to make the cut for the A team? And what I realized was Gary can speak that way. Not because of his success. I believe that he could speak that way because he's being 100% himself. I think that Gary would say the same thing if he didn't have a litany of successes, and he asks his team only what he asks of himself. He wants to take the 1% because he is the 1% in his own company. He works like the 1%. He talks like the 1%. He behaves like the 1% and he gets results of the 1%. So he says what he says, and then he follows through. And so I think to myself, he's being 100% of himself. He's not asking anybody on his team what he's not going to give of himself.

Jasmine Star 00:28:11  And so to me, as we model out this whole company and he says, are you going to pick up what I put down, that I could say the same thing, even if I don't have the same amount of success as Gary. But I could say the same thing if I am expecting of the team, of what I expect of myself, and I am being 100 of myself. So since that call with Gary as I build a whole company and I asked him, what would you do differently? I am stepping into speaking my truth. I am openly explaining why to the team. I am making certain bets. Even if it doesn't make sense. And I admit to the team that even on the days that it doesn't look exactly feasible or believable. I believe in the macro vision. I don't know why I believe in it. I just do. And I can only say that with the complete assuredness and complete certainty, because the past could be an indication of success. But what I believe beyond all that is, I wouldn't have been given the vision of this if I didn't have the capacity to at least try.

Jasmine Star 00:29:14  And so I think that it feels sometimes that as you and I build, it feels like it can be impossible. Right? Like the thing that you want to build and the thing that you want to do, you wonder, do I have the team? Do I have the capacity? Do I have the foresight? In some ways, the person that I have to convince is less of the team and more of myself. So if you have ever come across an opportunity where you actually had to convince yourself when nobody else believed, I feel you. I'm there. It's okay. And when those days come, I just simply remind myself of the three main things that I had learned from that call 8 or 9 months ago. Number one. Hire experienced team members. Number two. Macro vision. Micro test. And number three. Be unapologetic about yourself, your vision, and what you expect from your team. That, my friends, is a nine month update from the Holdco. The next time we do this, I look forward to sharing the updates.

Jasmine Star 00:30:10  The good, the bad, and the not so beautiful because that is the process of building a skyscraper. Other people call it a whole. You call it a foundation. Now it's time to fill it and build. I just want to say thank you so much for watching and listening to the Jasmine Star Show. If this show impacted you, it would mean the world to me for you to send it to somebody else. As a small thank you. I hope you have a beautiful day.