How I Scaled My Personal Brand to 7 Figures

Ever rolled your eyes at the phrase “personal brand”? Same. But before you check out, I want to show you why building a personal brand might be the most profitable thing you do in business.

In this episode, I’m sharing:

• What building a personal brand really means (hint: it's not about being an influencer)
• The exact hires that helped me step into my CEO role
• The journal entry I wrote after hiring a COO (yes, I’m sharing it 👀)
• And how one messy Facebook post led me to my most powerful team member

Back in 2019, I was running multiple 7-figure offers, managing teams, building tech—and I was overwhelmed. I needed help, but I didn’t know where to start. So I under-hired on purpose, and it changed everything.

If you're juggling all the hats and feeling stretched too thin, this episode is for you.

Because your personal brand isn’t fluff—it’s a growth lever. And when you build the right team and let go of perfection, you can scale faster than ever.

Let’s dive in.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[01:00] Why personal branding isn’t just for influencers (and how it can add 7 figures in revenue).

[03:00] What I had to unlearn in order to scale my personal brand while running a business.

[04:00] How hiring an operator changed everything (plus my exact hiring process).

[05:30] A raw, emotional journal entry from the week I hired my COO.

[07:15] The Facebook post that led to the best hire of my life (yes, really).

[08:30] The truth about my messy backend systems (and why they were breaking me).

[10:45] Why under-hiring first can be strategic—and how I elevated my hire into a COO.

Listen to Related Episodes:

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

📧 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/episode582

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Transcript

Jasmine Star 00:00:00  The game of personal brand is share everything you know. Share what it is that you do, how you do it. And it's crazy. It's when you do that that people will pay you. If you've ever found yourself wondering when somebody talks about a personal brand, what does it even mean? If you've ever wanted to leverage your name, your face, or likeness to actually build not just your personal brand, but a business? If you've ever wanted to find a way to confidently talk to people about what it is you do, what it is you love, and the purpose you're here on this world to do. Yes, this is the show for you. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. I empower entrepreneurs to build seven figure businesses and scale them to eight. And today we are going to be talking about building a personal brand. Now, before you roll your eyes or turn your way and just say, that's just totally not for me. I am here to tell you that if you gave me the next 30 ish minutes, I'm just simply going to present a case.

Jasmine Star 00:00:51  I'm going to be answering questions about how when you build a personal brand, it could bring seven figures of revenue just on the personal brand as ancillary revenue to what you're actually doing in the business. So if you're not interested in adding another seven figures of revenue, okay, scroll away, turn away. This isn't for you. But if that has piqued your interest, let's dive in. So I want to give a little bit of context and framework. I host a mastermind for seven figure founders, and part of the reason I am aggregating this group of women together, it's primarily to focus on three main things. And these three things have become pillars in my business and in the iterations of my business. So I'm going to read a little bit from my website. Number one, embrace the power of branding, high level marketing strategies, and creating systems that scale. We are bringing people in who are really wanting to focus on those three pillars the power of branding, high level marketing strategies, the Saint Mamas marketing strategy, and systems that scale.

Jasmine Star 00:01:52  So it was in that time that I started having and fielding a lot of questions from the seven figure entrepreneurs as they scale to eight and they're like, great, Jasmine. We also want to either scale our personal brands or really start leveraging our personal brands so that we expedite how quickly we grow our businesses. So I'm going to pull a few of their questions, and I'm going to share them as the foundation and framework for this particular podcast. So put a little bit of context. These are seven figure founders wanting to leverage their personal brands as they scale to eight. I'm going to introduce you to Valerie. You can find her on Instagram at Kigali Valerie Kigali. Now she is the founder of the Wellness Vault. It is an all in one platform for customizable health and nutrition coaching content. As she is scaling her seven figure business, she's really leveraging her personal brand as a part of it. So here was a couple questions from Valerie. What were the top positions you hired to help you step into your zone of genius and why? What was the one thing you had to unlearn about business in order to succeed as a personal brand.

Jasmine Star 00:03:02  I really loved these questions from Valerie, because I think that she's getting immediately to the main thing. In order for me to expand my personal brand, I needed more time to do it. And if I needed more time in my business, I would have to hire people to do things that I was doing. And the goal was to hire people who were better at it than I was. And then she asked, what did I have to unlearn? So let's unpack these questions. The best hire that I ever made. And we're going to be focusing on the scaled power of a visionary and an operator. And part of the reason why I was doing that was because in 2019, the business had expanded to such a degree that I realized I bit off more than I can chew. I had successfully started businesses and began scaling, and I knew that I had come to a point where I needed to operationalize and I needed to systematize, but it was hard for me to understand. I think I had done an okay job with it, but not exactly at what I needed to do.

Jasmine Star 00:04:04  And just in case you really want to understand the depth of how I was feeling, I'm going to share with you a journal entry. This is my actual journal entry from 2019. But before I do that, where was I as an entrepreneur in 2019? I had taken my last photography client in 2016. So from 2016 to 2019, there was me just focusing on the educational side of my business and building out a personal brand. So for three years, we had introduced a multiple set of seven figure revenue courses about Instagram, about branding. During this time, we launched a membership called Social Curator that ended up building, at that same time, our own tech stack. So we had a lot of moving pieces and a lot of divisions to the business with those teams in them, and I realized the business was growing faster than my skill set. Let's dive in to that personal journal entry. Right after I had made an offer to what I called to at the time, an executive project manager. I knew that I needed a head of operations, or even better, I knew I needed a COO, a chief operating officer.

Jasmine Star 00:05:20  But number one, I didn't know how to hire for it, and I didn't want to over hire or over title. Right? I'm like, I'm looking for a CEO. And then they come in and they realize it's not a good fit. So I did something that I'm really proud that I did because I manage my expectations, and I was able to find somebody that I could work with on a much smaller scale and then elevate her within the organization. She was a COO for an online law firm at the time, so I was completely blown away that when she saw this job opportunity, not as a director of ops, not even as an ops manager, much less a coup, that she saw this job listing of all places on Facebook. I went to Facebook. I did everything everybody says you shouldn't do. I went to Facebook and I overheard. I was like, I'm really overwhelmed in business. I'm looking for somebody who can come in and manage my personal brand projects. I have a lot of moving pieces, and she saw that post she had replied to.

Jasmine Star 00:06:15  At the time I was working with a recruiter, replied to the recruiter, went through the recruiting process and she was such a standout. Obviously she was a standout. She was so overqualified for the role of a executive project manager that when I saw her test project came back, and when the way that she had interviewed, I was like, this girl is something special. I even asked her, why are you taking a down move? It's not. It wasn't even a horizontal move. Like you're literally taking an under job placement from where you were at your current job. And she said it was an opportunity for her. She wanted to come along and be a part of a business that scaled. She loved that we were building tech and she loved the people that we were serving, and she deeply understood, like what I was about, what the brands were about and how big the business can get. That was all exciting until we made her a formal offer and she accepted. This whole time I'm like, there's no way she's going to accept.

Jasmine Star 00:07:06  There's no way she's going to accept. And then my husband and I were on a vacation in Santa Barbara, California. It was actually 4th of July weekend. We had taken an extended weekend, and I knew I wanted to make her the offer. We had our final interview. It was 4th of July weekend, and I literally looked across my husband and I was like, Independence Day for this country and independence for me. For me trying to figure out how I can operationalize the business so independence across all spectrums. Then I wrote this journal entry from July 10th, 2019, had my first training call with Jade today. I'm thankful, but I mostly feel embarrassed. She asked simple questions that I couldn't answer. No, we don't have an employee manual. No, I process payroll myself. No, we don't have a protocol. People just ask me for vacation time. The business is doing so well, I can't quite believe it, but it's disorganized and everyone is doing things however they think is best.

Jasmine Star 00:08:01  I'm just trying to survive. I hope she doesn't quit. That was exactly how I was feeling. I was a little bit embarrassed just to admit that that's where I was, and I wanted to make sure that we shared that process with you. Now, if you are listening to that and you feel like it's somewhat identifiable, you're like, oh yeah, I would kind of feel the same. I'm actually going to take a depth further. Let's explain what type of questions that she was asking me. She would say, so where can I find these certain files? And I would say, well, some of them are in Dropbox. So we keep our video files in Dropbox but in G drive. Well, that's where we have the assets for the membership and on Google Sheets. Well that's how we organize just like links and data. But on Google Docs that's where we do our long form content. Oh, and then on asana is how we have our task management and she's like, okay. Then she would ask questions like, well, what are the department processes like? And I'm like, well, we have a process on the educational side, and then we have a process for our content side.

Jasmine Star 00:09:05  And then our support team has their own process. And she's like, so if anybody in the business were to make a lateral move between departments, they would have to learn a whole new system in the way that it's operating. It'd be like, yeah, that's exactly it. And until she was asking me those questions, I never thought anything about it. I was like, well, yeah. And there is a different, smarter, better way to do it. And that's what she was looking at. She also asked things like, how long does it prepare just for one arm of the business. Right. She's just looking at one arm of the business. She's like, so how long does it take for you to prepare the membership content? Well, what are you asking for? Because we have, like, our visuals take a certain amount of time. Our copy takes a certain amount of time while marketing. I'm not sure because it changes every month. And then the education and then the support.

Jasmine Star 00:09:49  Like how? Like how does it all take? Well, I would have to ask like seven different people and then the blah blah blah. I didn't have a clear answer and it was all very revealing. So it was bringing up a lot of uncomfortable, a lot of insecurity, and a lot of revealing of just how tangled the back end of the business was. So I had a very clear realization, and it was I hustled and I was passively operationally competent, and I got the business to $3 million, but without the systems, I couldn't scale past that point. Now I want to take a minute and point out that most businesses can kind of hustle muscle their way to 1.2 and 1.5. I would say that probably my operational skills were stronger than most. I had created a lot of strong foundations when I had created my photography business, so I was able to use that skill set and apply it to a separate arm of the business I was able to operationalize, like when I started creating courses, but then this is where the complexity came layered in.

Jasmine Star 00:10:53  I had multiple courses. We had launched a membership with multiple arms and different departments, and all of a sudden I realized this is beyond my skill set. So when she came in, her main objective was to raise the bar, raise the bar of how we ran the company operationally. So she started building out a process for hiring team members. And once we hired them, she created a process and a system for onboarding these new team members. She started processes and systems to define the culture of the business. Every part of the business became operationalized like, what is our maternity and paternity leave? She had created a system and a process for that. How does one request time off? She created a process and system for that. How do we respond when x, y, and z? There's process and systems, so any department across all of the organization is going to be running very similar so that we can standardize how we scale. So when Valerie asked, like, well, who did you hire? I would say that that key role was a complete game changer and allowed us to scale far beyond that point.

Jasmine Star 00:12:02  I would say that would be the main, main thing. If you aren't really skilled at operations and you want to scale past 3 million, you're going to have to bring in somebody who's just focused solely on that. So Valerie then asked, what did you have to unlearn about building a personal brand? I had to unlearn. Don't hire fans. Hired team meets. For the first three, four years of my business, I was going to Instagram and Facebook. I was going to my social platforms and saying, I'm hiring for this role. And what I realized is that fans believe in you and teammates believe in the vision. I didn't want people to be like, I really like Jasmine. The version that people see of me on the outside is about 2% of the person who's running the business, and so it took time for the fans when I would hire people who were like a big fan of like, I really love your content, which was great, except for the fact that people don't count the cost of what it means to create that content, count the cost of what it means to create a seven and eight figure business.

Jasmine Star 00:13:04  All of those things were very important to how we were growing, and fans had a hard time seeing between the two. The second thing I had to unlearn about business is that clear is kind. I felt like I didn't want to be rude, and I didn't say things the way I should have said them. When I am very clear, that is the kindest thing that I could ever do to a teammate. I'm going to be as clear as possible or on feedback on how they're doing a great job. And I'm going to be very clear at what they need to do to get better at their job. So this was direct communication. We're not mean. We're not rude. We just say what needs to be said. And I spent way too long trying to be like nice or considerate or thoughtful. I don't want to hurt your feelings. Or what? What are you going to think about me if I say that I that is. I had to unlearn that. And I had to be very clear about feedback and expectations.

Jasmine Star 00:13:54  Hey, this is what we're doing really great. This is what we need to see if you want to elevate with this organization, if you want to move from being a 1099 contractor to a W-2, these are the things that we need to see. If you can't exhibit those qualities as a contractor, there's no way we're going to hire you as a W2. So here are the expectations. Can you hit them? Amazing. Clear is kind. The third thing I had to unlearn about business in order to succeed as a personal brand was it's not me taking care of the team. The business is taking care of the team. If I take care of the business, the business will take care of the team. This is like very difficult because there's a lot of unlearning I had to do. I am the eldest of five children in a family, and I'm the eldest of five children of family. In an immigrant family, I took inordinate amounts of responsibility for my siblings. I carried that into my business.

Jasmine Star 00:14:51  I felt like I had to be responsible to everybody, and what I realized was that it became very, very exhausting and overwhelming for me because I felt like I was always letting people down. And what I now realize is I am not responsible for the team. The business is responsible for the team. If I take care of the business, if I make decisions for the business, if I make investments for the business, if I cast a vision for the business, if I set up operations for the business, if I do that well, well, then dang, the business takes care of the team. And if I don't take care of the business and we have to downsize the team, or we have to make strategic cuts, or we have to re budget and allocate differently. That's not me. It was the business. When I pay attention to the business, the business is what takes care of the team. Separating those two things. I want to introduce you now to Heidi Easley. You can find her on Instagram at Texas Heart and Soul Underscore.

Jasmine Star 00:15:43  She is the founder of Paint Party Headquarters. She is a member of my mastermind. She came in in cohort one and two. Actually, her and Valerie have done both of the cohorts. I'm just so stinking proud of what they're doing in their businesses. Their businesses are freaking incredible, and they're insanely profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, they run businesses. So how would you describe Paint Party headquarters? Well, it's teaching creatives how to make money with paint parties. So let's get into Heidi's question. So Heidi asked, what's your routine for batch creating content? Any tips on how you do your makeup and styles before you create? I know those are weird questions, but the people gotta know also, what protein do you drink? Is there a lunch break? Is it back to back? The real, the messy? I will tell you, I didn't want to answer this question at all from Heidi. I was like.

Jasmine Star 00:16:30  No, not this one.

Jasmine Star 00:16:31  But she promises me Jasmin. People actually want to know the nitty gritty.

Jasmine Star 00:16:35  How are you creating content? How much time is it taking? How are you batching? Okay, so let's get into the specifics. I do my own hair and makeup for my social media batching days. I just have found it's just the fastest and the easiest. And I realized that I really wasn't doing my makeup so that it looked nice on camera. So I went to YouTube and I started watching YouTube tutorials. And I've come a long way. I still got a long way to go, but when we're recording for social media, that's just the fastest and the easiest. Second point is I plan every single outfit in advance and I have everything organized. I ordered from target. I ordered a clothing rack. I think it was like $20. I assembled it myself and I keep the clothing rack in my closet. But on my content days, I bring the clothing rack out and I just lay out every single outfit because it just helps me stay organized and I can move very fast. But here again, all of the outfits are planned before the day of the shoot.

Jasmine Star 00:17:27  As far as what protein I drink, I really like ohn o w I n protein drinks. I'm not an affiliate, although hey, if they'd like to kick me down with some free protein, I will absolutely take it. They have a protein drink that has 32g of protein in a single bottle. It's thick, but man, it gets the job done. Also, if you are more of like a mixed powder, I really like the chocolate protein powder. Each scoop has about 22g of protein, so I'll put two scoops of protein. I will also put chia seeds. I'll put hemp seeds, I'll put almond butter. I will put a serving of collagen. And so I have a recipe that is about 72g of protein for a protein smoothie. I drink it every single day. I drink it at 11:00. That's kind of my breakfast and my lunch, and I just drink it slowly for like the next two hours. It's thick. People ask, does it taste good? Listen, listen. It's 72g of protein throughout the day.

Jasmine Star 00:18:24  It probably doesn't taste.

Jasmine Star 00:18:25  Amazing.

Jasmine Star 00:18:26  But it gets it done okay. It gets it done. Let's dive in to now some of the logistics. What you're looking at is our TikTok concept creation. This is a notion board. So all of our systems and processes what you'll see is like there's a drop down menu with an arrows process for planning TikTok concepts when we get help to create these concepts, this is our SOP standardized operating procedures. This is the way we always do it. This is the directions for how you get it done. This is so that myself, our marketing team, our marketing director is not micromanaging people. This is how we get it done. We also have instructions and then we have instructions for repurposing. Now, what we're going to dive into and look at is our schedule. This is a schedule of a real TikTok day, or what we would call a short form, because when we create short form videos on our phone, I'm doing it for Instagram and for TikTok. So you can see we have it down to a minute.

Jasmine Star 00:19:21  Look at that first one. It's 9 to 9:08 a.m., 908 to 940. Then we have a ten minute outfit change. And what you'll also see is like the wardrobe. So I get this outline from my team and I'm going to know, okay, I need four outfits. I need five outfits. What props am I going to need? Do I need a microphone? Where are we recording this? How long do we suspect each one is going to take us? So we're very organized in maximizing what we're going to be doing that day. Now, what you're looking right now is the view of videos for Instagram. So you'll see that we title the video for Instagram. You'll also see that we have a standardized way of we keep all of our short form videos in Dropbox, but we're cataloging where these links exist inside of notion. Notion is like our go to all end all be all. We go to notion to find everything. But for the planning and logistics team we're going to be archiving within Dropbox, you will see that we have thumbnail photos for each of those videos, and you'll also find other detailed information.

Jasmine Star 00:20:23  So what you're going to look at now is if I were to open one of these cards, what you'll see here is this particular short form video was called Poster quote. And when you open it up, you will see the filling date you were going to see. When we have our first proofing date, you're going to see when we're going to put it out on TikTok versus Instagram. you'll find the music that we should be sourcing and finding and applying to it. You'll see the final Instagram format that we have backed up on Dropbox, so you'll see how deeply and everything is organized. So our goal is to create at least 13 short form videos in a day when we do them on iPhone. And I just have to tell you, that's exhausting. I have been doing this now for years. I work with a partner, she comes in on her phone and we execute on this. Do you need to work with a partner? No, not at all. I created all of my own content on my own, on my phone.

Jasmine Star 00:21:18  For years by myself, I have created and leveraged building my personal brand by investing in a personal brand team. And because I'm running multiple businesses and creating content, her coming in, we expedite and she has made my life so much easier, so much more fun, so much more strategic. And she's always pushing me to run harder and faster. All right. Let's get into another question from Deanna Wolfe. She is in my mastermind. You can find her dietitian, Deanna. She runs online Entrepreneur academy for nutrition professionals and Health care coaches to build a virtual business and create impact. So her question comes along the lines of a little bit something more specific. How can I build a personal brand quicker? Another question. What I have now has taken me ten years, but what would you have done differently? And her last and final question is, can I build a personal brand that doesn't require sharing my whole life online, or require me sharing really personal things? Okay, let's go back and talk about this idea that it had taken her ten years to build a personal brand, what she would have asked to do quicker.

Jasmine Star 00:22:29  What you're looking at right here is a photo of me in 2006 2007, I was a girl with a camera and with a dream. Nobody knew who I was. Very few people were paying me to do what it is that I wanted to do. So in 2007, that's when I officially started my career as a photographer. I was posting photos on a blog and I was writing about my experiences, what I was learning, what I was doing, what I was shooting. I didn't have a website. I just continued talking about this journey as I became a photographer. So I shared everything I learned, and I was good at taking complex ideas and making them understandable and actionable. And I want to pause here for a second, because in 2007, I actually didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how big the business could get, and I didn't know the impact that I was making. I was just sharing what I was doing and what I was learning. I am creating these podcasts the same way I was creating those blog posts 20 years ago.

Jasmine Star 00:23:41  And that was simply, I'm going to take complex ideas and I'm going to break them down so that they're understandable and actionable. That is what I am doing with this podcast right now. That's what I was doing with that blog post back then, and I will be the first to say that I am making content and I don't know everything that I am doing. I am just sharing everything that I know, and I wanted to make sure that I was creating that parallel so people deeply understood that I'm going to keep the main thing, the main thing, even when it feels slow and even when it is not sexy. So in 2008, I started creating photography content. So 2007, I was just like, this is me.

Jasmine Star 00:24:20  I have a camera, this is what I'm learning.

Jasmine Star 00:24:22  And then when I decided to do it in 2008, was to put a little bit more structure to it, I was going to start teaching people. I was no longer documenting what I was doing. I was teaching them what I had done that first year of business, because within that first year of business, I had made over $100,000, and as a new photographer, not knowing what she was doing, that was a big deal.

Jasmine Star 00:24:42  There was a lot of photographers who weren't making $100,000 their first year of business. There was a lot of photographers who weren't making $100,000.10 years into their business. So I started teaching the methodology and documenting that process so that by 2009, after sharing a year of me sharing what I was doing, people wanted to visually see it. They were reading it, but they wanted to see me in action. So in 2009, I debuted a photography shop online and I was selling videos for $2.99. I was selling PDFs for $9.99. I was selling PDFs for $19.99. This was very low ticket, but I had built trust along the way that people had said, if I'm already getting that much value from these blog posts or current day, if I'm already getting all of this value from the podcast that she's creating, what would it look like for me to invest in her business friends? That's the game. The game of personal brand is sharing everything you know. Share what it is that you do, how you do it.

Jasmine Star 00:25:38  And it's crazy. It's when you do that that people will pay you. People often think, oh, I can't share everything, I know you better, or else you're going to have a very hard time getting somebody to pay you.

Jasmine Star 00:25:46  Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:25:48  So 2009 we create that digital storefront. Now I want to take a second here and give a little bit of real talk, because so far it's been very aspirational. Look at all the cool stuff I've done. I spoke to Empty Rooms. I wrote articles no one read. I posted pictures nobody liked. I made offers that nobody bought, and it felt like I was moving backward. I can look back and tell you right now that was my journey and that's.

Jasmine Star 00:26:12  What.

Jasmine Star 00:26:12  It was. But I will tell you in the moment.

Jasmine Star 00:26:15  It.

Jasmine Star 00:26:15  Literally felt like I was moving backward. It literally felt like I wasn't getting attention, recognition, customers, growth in the way that I wanted or I thought was palpable. But the key thing here was I didn't quit.

Jasmine Star 00:26:29  I learned and I iterated when we launched the store and it got great results, I realized that those results were a pop in the pan. What was I going to do to continue fostering those levels of results? What was I going to do to continue fostering speaking not to empty rooms, but rooms that had 2 or 3 people? What was I going to do to continue fostering the luxury clients and art directors that I was getting on the back of my photography? I didn't quit when it felt like I was moving backwards. I felt every single lesson was pushing me closer to the thing that I was supposed to do. So it wasn't until years later. Actually, Roy Vaden, I'm going to link to Rory's podcast. Rory has been a guest on my podcast twice. Both of those podcasts were probably one of the most successful podcasts that I had done in those given years, so I'm going to link them in the show notes. But Rory always talks about Sheehan's wall and how do you break through? How do you have a personal brand where people are going out of their way, paying more, spending a longer time, waiting longer for what it is? And he describes Sheehan's wall is if we were to imagine now, if you're watching on video, you could see it.

Jasmine Star 00:27:35  But just if you're listening audibly picture a wall, picture a wall and you want to break through that wall. Now, the reason you want to break through that wall is that means that was the defining point, that your brand became the name in your industry, that you became known as the guru, the source, the person that people listen to. Sheehan's wall means that the minute you break through that in regards to your personal brand, you then earn the right to talk about multiple things. Let's break this down with an example. When we look at Brené Brown, she has earned the right to be on different shows and have multiple podcasts and multiple social media platforms. Because she broke through she hens wall talking about vulnerability and shame. She became the go to guru industry leader when it comes to vulnerability and shame. Then, after she broke through Sheehan's wall talking about vulnerability and shame, she could talk about entrepreneurial growth and leadership. She could talk about strategy. She could talk about a lot of different things because she broke through the wall and being the go to person for that.

Jasmine Star 00:28:42  Let's look at Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary Vaynerchuk can talk about Web3. He could talk about comics. He could talk about wine. He can talk about social media. He could talk about strategy, why he broke through Sheehan's wall by talking about one thing and being the go to guru for what? Wine tasting on YouTube. If you wanted to know anything about wine, you were going to go to Gary Vaynerchuk. He broke through the wall, becoming known for one thing, and then started talking about multiple things thereafter. When we talk about your personal brand people, this is where a lot of people get confused. They look at Gary Vaynerchuk, they look at Dave Ramsey, they look at Brené Brown, they look at Martha Stewart, they look at Rihanna, and they think, well, Rihanna has a makeup line and she sings and she acts and she has all these other things. Right? But before Rihanna had the right to do all of those things, she had to become the best at one thing. And as you build your personal brand, I want you to go deep and very wide around the thing that you are most known for that is breaking through Shinhwa.

Jasmine Star 00:29:42  I was able to break through Sheehan's wall by way of my photography career, and then add different elements of education, and I've earned the right to talk about different things, because every time I iterated, I focused on sharing everything I know, focused on creating content around that, empowering people by making complex ideas actionable and doable. And I did that in different disciplines every single time, focusing deep and wide on a singular audience that over time has expanded my personal brand beyond photography, beyond social media, beyond strategy, beyond content. So now, 18, 20 years later, I'm focused on a specific niche becoming an industry authority. I served people well. I had proven results, and I expanded slowly. If you would like to build a personal brand and if you would like to break through Sheehan's wall, then I want you to follow the same thing. Focus on a specific industry. Become an industry authority. Serve well, get proven results, and then expand slowly. What was happening during this time was that it didn't feel like it was happening fast enough.

Jasmine Star 00:30:49  So if your question like Deanna's is how do I go faster? Content is gasoline. Period. The end. If you want to grow faster and build a personal brand that has taken me 18 years, it has taken Deanna ten years. And you want to do it faster? Well, then I'm going to have you focus on consistency. That's the number one thing you need to be putting out content at minimum every single day. The people who I see at the time of this recording, 25 and 26, there are people who are dropping 3 to 4 pieces of content on Instagram and TikTok every single day. They're getting outsized results right now. Will that always work? I don't know, but right now it's the lion's share. 100%. Then, in order to become a trusted industry specific leader, you want to have three content pillars. What are the same? Three messages that you're banging a drum over and over and over again? And then lastly, when it comes to using your content to grow faster of being consistent, having three content pillars, making those 1 to 1 connections.

Jasmine Star 00:31:53  This is where I think a lot of people get mixed up. Like if they become popular or really well known, well then people are just going to flock to them. It's actually counter opposite. What I've discovered is that the bigger the brand has gotten, the less people feel like you're approachable or they would want to invest in you because they think like, oh, this person doesn't have time for me. I've realized that by answering my own direct messages, it has done more for conversions than anything else has. Yeah, you can have a great ads campaign. Okay, awesome. But if you have a great ad campaign and it's layered with a one on one connection or a touch point, game over. Done and done, you become unmissable with. All right, let's get into another question from the mastermind member. And Abby actually did cohort number one and two. Her name is Abby Kirsten at Abby underscore Kirsten underscore collections on Instagram. She runs. Abby. Kirsten collections its joyful crafting for everyday moments and special life occasions.

Jasmine Star 00:32:47  She teaches people how to elevate their crafting, and she's done such a great way at taking what people consider a hobby, and really going deep dive with a really creative community and building her business around that. So I really liked her question, because it gets really to the root of things. How do you scale a personal brand? Not just your personality, but a legacy? How do you go from being known for what you sell to being known as a category niche leader, not just recognized, but referenced, not just admired, but aspired to. Not just followed, but felt. What were the pivotal mindset decisions that helped you make that transformation? what had to evolve in your leadership to not just scale the business, but scale yourself. My response to this is really straightforward, but it's not exactly easy. I had to believe that I could lead. I had to believe that I wanted to lead. That took me a very long time. For years, I would never consider myself a leader. Furthermore, I didn't know if I even wanted to lead.

Jasmine Star 00:33:57  Leadership, from my perspective, was also like very mired. I had mentioned before I had a lot of childhood responsibility. Probably looking back at it, I have deep empathy and sympathy for the younger version of myself. I think that I probably carried too much as a kid, and I don't think that it was my parents fault. I just think it was where my family was. It was really tough growing up with little money and little resources. It was really tough to grow up in an immigrant family with five kids, and my mom homeschooled all of us. It's just a lot. It was a lot for my dad. It was a lot for my mom. We didn't have cars. We didn't have a washing machine. We're taking our clothes in black plastic trash bags to a laundromat like a mile away, washing and folding and then bringing them all back. It's a lot for a kid. And what I realized was that I was carrying that into my professional life. Decades later, I looked at like, team needs.

Jasmine Star 00:34:59  I looked at team instances where it felt like a deep sense of betrayal. I looked at feeling I was responsible for their needs, and that made it very complex because I just thought, I don't want a big team because then they become needy and then I have to run the risk of people like making decisions that are best for them. When I had spent years pouring into them, what am I actually responsible for when it comes to a team? And all of that was a me thing. That was an inside job. There was no outside forces that was going. Nobody was going to come over with a sword and tapped me on my right shoulder, and then tapped me on my left shoulder and, like, knight me into a leader. I just had to decide that, number one, I could. And then number two, I wanted to. So what was the biggest mindset shift that I had? I pick my team, I pick it, I'm in control. I am in the, dare I say, powerful position to choose who I want to work with.

Jasmine Star 00:35:59  We can't choose our family, but we can choose our team. And I realize that probably for the first half of my career, I was just like, oh, I was hoping that somebody would want to work for me. I just felt so lucky that anybody would want to work for me. And all of a sudden, I felt like I was working with people who I was bestowed to. And the mindset shift was, oh, I get to pick the best of the best for me. I don't care if nobody else in the world thinks that this team is like great, a gangster ninja level, I don't care, they're great. A gangster level, ninja level. For me. I got determined how I wanted to work, I got to determine who I wanted to work with, and I got to determine what I expect from them. The clear I got at how I wanted to work, who I wanted to work with, and what I wanted for them. The game changed. I all of a sudden realized I actually want to work with these people.

Jasmine Star 00:36:52  I want to lead these types of people. It wasn't a them think it was a me thing. I shifted that mindset and then I get to set where we're going and they get to set how we get there. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with my content co-creator, and she and I are taking a trip tomorrow, and she comes to me and she's asking me, what is the angle that you want to take for the vlog? And I was like, okay, okay, so what am I doing here? Where are we going with this vlog? All I have to say is these are like the three topics. And then you can kind of like, what do you think is going to resonate? She's like, great, give me tonight, I'm going to go through and I'm going to pick which one I think is best. I'm going to go through it. I'm gonna create the question. I'm gonna create a structure. I'll run it by you before we get on that trip. Heck yes.

Jasmine Star 00:37:35  Like take me to church. Thank you. I get to pick you. You get to be good. It is what it is you do. I get to lead somebody who's self-sufficient and talented. Sign me up for that. Guess what? Those people always exist. Those people always exist. I didn't know how to find them because I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't know what I wanted. I set the vision. I hire really talented people, and then they take it from there. You want to know what happens with that mindset shift? The team becomes vision multipliers and brand expanders. How do I create a brand that's just not about making Jasmine Star popular? Number one, that's the last freaking thing I want. I don't want to be popular. I don't want to be famous. I want to have impact. I want to change people's lives, not by me, but by instilling a belief in them that they can go out and do the thing that they want to do. Stop living a freaking small life.

Jasmine Star 00:38:25  Stop having your life dictated by fear. My job on this world is to tell you you can freakin do it. I will give you the tools to do it. You have to make that decision. The minute I started bringing people in my life that were not just about Jasmine, but about expanding that vision, you can do what you want. So set out and do it. They became vision multipliers and brand expanders. That to me is brand legacy. That is the very thing that I do on this podcast. This is the very thing that I want for you. If you don't believe me, here's an invitation. DM me at Jasmine Star. I want to have a conversation with you. I want to talk about brand. If you have found this at all helpful, send it to somebody you care about. Send it to them about saying this is not about just a business. It is about creating impact. This is about creating a seven figure brand as ancillary revenue to support your seven figure business.

Jasmine Star 00:39:17  As you scale to eight. Let's go. Thank you for watching and listening to the Jasmine Star Show.