The Jasmine Star Show

If You Don’t Quit, You Can’t Lose

• Jasmine Star

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This episode wasn’t supposed to air.

At the Wealthy & Well-Known Summit, I stepped on stage for an unfiltered Q&A about building a brand when nothing seems to be working. No keynote, no polish—just the truth.

I shared what the last two years have really looked like behind the scenes: missed expectations, pivots, and hard-won lessons in resilience, integrity, and reinvention.

You’ll hear:

  • What it means to build in the dark
  • The real cost of scaling
  • Why consistency matters more than confidence
  • How 25 Zoom calls shaped my next business move

If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it supposed to be this hard?”—this one’s for you.

Let’s ride.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:46] An honest behind-the-scenes look at why this recording felt too raw to release.

[01:44] Why leaning into polarity and being unapologetically bold matters more than ever.

[03:50] An exploration of what it feels like to evolve when your audience can't yet see the full picture.

[05:22] The difficult decision to give up control—and the clarity that followed.

[06:20] How a personal mantra—“If I don’t quit, I can’t lose”—became a lifeline during discouraging seasons.

[08:07] How real conversations with ideal clients led to a powerful, beta-tested business pivot.

Listen to Related Episodes:

If you’d like to connect further with Rory and his team, visit freebrandcall.com/jasminestar to sign up for a free call. You can also follow Rory on Instagram at @roryvaden and @brandbuildersgroup.

Share this episode with somebody you think would benefit from it, and send me a DM. I would be honored to know what resonated most with you from this episode.

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode604

You know that feeling when you find a platform that just works—and you never have to worry about switching? That’s been me and Showit for the past 10+ years.

I built my website with Showit because it gives me total design freedom.

If you’re ready to build a website that works FOR you—and not against you—head to JasmineStar.com/showit for a 14-day free trial + first month free when you subscribe!

Jasmine Star 00:00:00  I'm going to walk in integrity because somebody else needs to see the piece of content that I dread making, but it's helping them do what the thing that they want to do. If I'm standing in my purpose, I'm going to do things that are not a walk in the park. Because if we woke up and we thought that building a business should be a walk in the park, I'm going to tell you, you've been listening to the wrong dang person.

Jasmine Star 00:00:15  I had a guest on the show that didn't have just one of the most listened to episodes he had. Two of the most listened to episodes were. Eve Eden is co-founder of Brand Builders, and his insights on building a well-known and wealthy brand left people on the edge of their seats wanting more. I'm going to be sure to link to his prior episodes in the show notes, but today Rory is back, but not in the way you might expect. I was invited to speak at his event in Nashville, Tennessee, and it was an incredible shift from what I normally do because usually I'm invited to give a keynote.

Jasmine Star 00:00:46  But Rory asked me if I would be open to a raw, uncut, open, and painfully real conversation about creating content, the future of marketing, and building a brand that builds eight figure business owners, and I'm just going to have a moment of honesty. I wasn't planning on sharing this session publicly. It was a very intimate event. It was casual and I wasn't like an in speaker mode, right? Like me stepping on the stage, I was just me. I was unpolished, off the cuff and just spinning my truth in ways that maybe made some people in the room uncomfortable. And then I walked off the stage and I walked up to, like, the green room. And I immediately started replaying the questions and my answers, and I wondered if I said too much, if I was too open. And then I stopped myself and I told myself a better story. I literally took charge of the narrative in my mind. I reminded myself that I wasn't there to impress anyone. I wanted people to like me, but I didn't care if they did.

Jasmine Star 00:01:44  I repeated what I know to be true. My personal brand is here to do one of two things attract or repel. That's it. If what I shared in that room repelled people, then so be it. I'm not their person. If I attracted people, then. Heck yes. We ride at sunrise. And guess what? That is the same thing I reminded myself when I chose to make that session public here on my show. If you're down for it, we write at sunrise, and if not, that's totally cool. This Business growth Q&A, it might repel you, and I'm okay with that. But for those who are attracted to the real real of entrepreneurship and doing things in our own way, and in fact, I went on a walk with my sister this past week and she told me straight out, Jasmine, the way that you speak pushes people away. She's like, but if people want to know your real opinion, if they want to hear the truth from your perspective, they know that they're going to get it.

Jasmine Star 00:02:41  So if you are okay and you are here and you are used to getting back up after you've been knocked down again and again, welcome. I'm going to spit the truth. Pull up a seat. I'm happy you're here. Before I get into the video, I want to say thanks to Rory and AJ Vaden for allowing me to share the full session with you. So. Okay, now we're going to get into the wealthy and well-known summit Q&A right about now.

Rory 00:03:05  We are so excited to have you in the building. I want to jump right in with this conversation about resilience, and I want to know, what are the things that you struggle with in your life that other people don't see? What are some of the things that are going on every day? Because I think we see the success. You've got this great business, you've got amazing, beautiful family. And I know that one of the things that you champion a lot is just this message of resilience and your story. You live it, you live it.

Rory 00:03:36  So I would love to just hear, you know, share whatever background you like for everybody that you feel like they should know to have some context. And then I would love if you would let us into your world a little bit about what are some of the things you struggle with that maybe not everybody sees.

Jasmine Star 00:03:50  So I'm going to keep my origin story short. If you have questions, I'm a 100% open book. You can ask anything that you would like. I was on the plane here this morning and I was putting together something, and one of the things that people don't see, despite how it looks online, is the internal battle that we all face as we continue to iterate. I think it's just going to be an extension of what Julie had said. And oftentimes there is this deep desire to continue showing up as the former version, because it's the safe version. It's the version we know, and it takes a lot of courage to step out. And what a lot of people don't know, not for me not sharing it.

Jasmine Star 00:04:27  It's just if you have a question. Absolutely. I'm a big fan of systematizing and operationalizing a business in 23. My husband and I, my business partner, we founded a holding company, and part of that is that we will have an outright ownership stake, an equity stake, or an advisory stake in the company. And so this has been a way for me to extend my brand. But in order for me to have the time to take on these advisory roles is I needed to systematize all arms of the business. One of the businesses was social curator. It was taking up so much of my time so that we put in a president in 23, and I really thought 24. Next thing, let's go another revenue arm, because the way that life had worked had been akin to taking one arm in a jungle of a tree into another. It was a series of concentric circles and strings that continued to grow the career. And then 23 happens, and I just thought, well, it's going to come and it's going to come.

Jasmine Star 00:05:22  My word of the year was 20, 23 was rebirth. And I thought, oh, clear. Great. 12 months is going to be perfectly soft in December. It's going to be here. And then it wasn't. And then in 2024, the word of the year was independence. And it wasn't doing it on your own. It was doing it in my own way. And that was really hard because still nothing came. So what people see on the outside is a lot of the shiny. And it was and it was good and it was wonderful. But there was this deep internal battle that made me think, I think I lost it. I don't have it anymore. And I think that when Rory talks about what resilience is, it's simply looking at. We worked through this. Invest in Rory. I believe in Rory. I've done everything that you all have been doing. And we sat in a room. And I deeply then understood that I am resilient because I've now come to own and believe that if I don't quit, I can't lose.

Jasmine Star 00:06:20  But that's very hard for two years. Let me tell you. Waking up every day and being like that was it. You lived the peak. And I'm very thankful. I'm a first generation Latina. I have done so much in my tiny little life that I know that I have broken generational curses, and it's a lot, and it's beautiful and it's powerful. And that alone. I could die today and say, I did it, but I will tell you, for two years it has been a vacuum. That is stuff we don't talk about as founders. And when we talk about resilience, it is simply the decision to get up again. So every day for over two years, getting up and being like today is going to be the day and then going to bed was like, today was not the day. Tomorrow we're going to try again. So yeah, that's really what the last two years have been. And in December talk about like an on time God. December of 24 we sat down and what I did again and again, and never mind the fact that we were putting things out like the market never lies, the market's always right.

Jasmine Star 00:07:21  And what I had a few qualifiers of what we wanted to do is like we wanted to shorten the time. We hit six figures of revenue in every arm of the business. So our first, you know, business, it took us about four years to hit $1 million. And then the second business took us a year and we started doing Million Dollar month. And I was like, okay, something is magical here. How do we start truncating this and building the team to sustain it? And so we would go through these offers, and I immediately understood, despite our best effort, it was not going to manifest the way that we had wanted. The business worked. It's just not the type of business I wanted to build. And so to do that again and again and again was and is scary. So December 24th, the team and I get together and all I did you guys days was just getting on calls. Does anybody want to talk for 25 minutes. What's your greatest pressure point? Where are you at? What stuck? What did you do before? For years and years and years.

Jasmine Star 00:08:07  And so we launched a product. It's not even out yet, but we did it out on beta and we are so excited. All I know is your girl is back, your girl is back. But you don't earn the right to say I'm back. If you decided to leave.

Rory 00:08:22  Yeah, I love that. And one of the things is, you know, I look around some of our friends and it's like this idea of, like, being a creator, thought leader. You know, online influencer is now been around a while, like the idea of this industry. And I looked around and there's a lot of people who aren't here anymore. Like a lot of people started on this journey and like, I'm going to do a podcast or I'm going to YouTube or I'm going to like, be I'm going to create a course or I'm going to do a and they're not here anymore. And then but you're someone who has you started early. I feel I feel like you were I mean, I know you you started obviously as an internationally renowned wedding photographer, but you were on Instagram early, built your platform early, but you've had many different iterations, as you're saying.

Rory 00:09:12  What do you think has enabled you to stay for this long and to kind of like stay consistent and committed to the vision when so many people have whatever they got annoyed at the algorithm or Covid happened, or, you know, someone else came in their space, what do you think has caused you to be able to kind of like outlast a lot of the people in the space?

Jasmine Star 00:09:32  I mentioned that I'm a daughter of an immigrant. My father is Mexico and my mother is from Puerto Rico, and we grew up by the benevolence of people at church like we got government issued food. My dad was one of the hardest working men I know, worked for jobs at a time. He also had five children, you know, like very fruitful, except for the fact that like, there was no orchards. And so like at this point you ask yourself and you grew up and you understand that what you get is benevolence. And so I lived most of my adult life thinking that things were going to come to me.

Jasmine Star 00:09:59  And then all of a sudden, when I was 25 years old, I made the decision to go out and do something. And then I tasted the nectar and ambrosia of money, of earning something. And I will tell you, my first year of being a photographer earned $100,000, which is really, really, really rare in a creative space. And all I knew was taking my family to claim jumper and having everybody order anything they wanted, including drinks. Okay, because we would go to Mexican restaurants once a month and we'd all split a burrito and everybody got water except for my dad. And so to go to claim it was like she made it.

Jasmine Star 00:10:34  Oh my God, look at her. Look she fancy, she fancy, look good.

Jasmine Star 00:10:39  And all I felt in that moment was Whereas this is what people experience. The minute you have nothing and get something you will claw is all get out to keep it. That is an asset and it is a liability because all of a sudden there are times in my life and my career I became extraordinarily myopic.

Jasmine Star 00:11:01  I have to keep this. I'm going to lose this. I'm going to lose this. And it wasn't until my husband and I have a conversation and I'm like, you want to know what? We'll do it again. And this time we're going to do it faster and better. I had to tell myself that that was the truth when in front of me. It was just a big, vacuous space. I don't believe it's toxic positivity. I believe that the way that we speak to ourselves trains our brain in what we put out. So if we say, I'm in debt, guess what? You're right. Now, if you tell yourself I am $50,000 in debt and I can create a plan to get out, guess what? You're right. All this became was a complete narrative shift in who I was to who I wanted to be and then started speaking possibility, not toxic positivity. It was just the possibility to keep going. Just the possibility to not have to go back to the life of the half burritos.

Jasmine Star 00:11:52  And you want to know what? I was £173 at 12 years old. I was classically obese. Your girl wasn't starving, you know what I'm saying? That was kind of a joke. It's okay. We could totally laugh. I did not go starving. We were okay. We had a roof over our heads. We go back to that. I have learned to live with little. And I have learned to live with much. I would prefer to live with much for as long as humanly possible. But the idea was not toxic positivity. It was possibility. And that became a big game changer.

Rory 00:12:18  So what was the identity that you had when you started, and what's the identity that you have for yourself now? So like when you came into this space, I talk about like migrating from photographer to kind of like course creator, podcaster. What was your identity then and how is your identity different now in terms of how you talk about yourself to yourself, how you describe yourself to others, how you think about who you want to be.

Rory 00:12:48  Has there has that been a big transformation or has it been kind of the same?

Jasmine Star 00:12:52  So really quick, I said I wanted to become a photographer and I didn't own a camera. This is around 2007. And then in 2009.

Rory 00:13:00  I had a hugely strategic decision, actually, if you think about it. Yeah, right. It's like, no, I don't have a camera, but I just I'll be a photographer.

Jasmine Star 00:13:07  I was like.

Rory 00:13:08  Yeah, I could do this.

Jasmine Star 00:13:09  I think I could do that. Yeah. And built a business. Became internationally recognized within about a year and a half or two years, which people just didn't get because I was actually, in fact, not that great. And people on the internet loved to remind me of it. And I said, guess what? I might not be great, but I'm rich and I can get better. When you just deal with a set of facts and how you want to interpret. So Rory and I worked through this idea. It's not the facts that messes up.

Jasmine Star 00:13:31  It's the belief we associate with the facts. And so other people say you're not good. fact I agree. The belief about it is you think I can't get better and the belief is I'm going to get better. Watch me. And when I do, you're going to be really sad. You said those things because your name's on the internet and I screenshot them because I keep a folder of lovely things people say to me, it's sick and twisted, but let me tell you, I'm really thinking.

Jasmine Star 00:13:53  Really?

Rory 00:13:55  Oh, that's so great. Can you, like, give us a mani chat keyword to download the folder so we can just see.

Jasmine Star 00:13:59  Like there's like.

Rory 00:14:00  A little magnet.

Jasmine Star 00:14:01  Of the best here is. Okay, okay.

Jasmine Star 00:14:03  Let's do this real quick okay. So we're in a launch and I, I said I created a $19 PDF and I made $100,000 and people were like.

Jasmine Star 00:14:12  BS.

Jasmine Star 00:14:12  Not true liar fake snake oil man. I was like screenshot, screenshot, screenshot on a Saturday morning, my husband I have coffee, I have no makeup, there's just a colored wall.

Jasmine Star 00:14:21  I walk by and I just start pointing. And then, unbeknownst to me, my my daughter runs into the frame. Hand to heaven. Not planned. I don't intentionally like to do that type of content with her. She runs into the frame. I grab her hand. I start pointing. What I do is I get those screenshots and I point at B.S. liar, snake oil man hater. And then I'm like read the comment that real was about five six seconds. It was one of the highest performing reels. We turned it into an ad and I was like, thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:14:47  Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:14:50  So yeah, I absolutely screamed. I screenshot them, but I think I got off track.

Rory 00:14:54  That's okay. That was worth the ride. That was worth the ride. I mean, I was just you got your.

Jasmine Star 00:14:58  Idea about my idea.

Jasmine Star 00:14:59  So I was a person who wanted to become a photographer and didn't have a camera. So the belief I had about myself was, you've never done anything, and you have nothing to lose.

Jasmine Star 00:15:07  Because quite honestly, I had nothing to lose. So you build a career where you become known, and all of a sudden I was terrified to lose the thing because I had tasted it, I had experienced it, and all of a sudden I started hedging everything out of it. And we were sitting here talking about these conversations, and I had a friend who told me that life will give you a nudge, and then life will give you a knock, and then life will hit you with a rhinoceros. And I got hit with the rhinoceros. So I get into the digital marketing world, and the belief that I had with myself is just like, what do you have to lose? Its digital. You have time. What do you have to lose? I didn't have a lot of money, so I just went to the university at Google and my very first launch, I was just like. $197 for a course on Instagram. And in five days we did 255,000. And then in that year we launched it and did over a million on $197.

Jasmine Star 00:15:59  And that opened my eyes to what was possible. And then all of a sudden, in 2017, we launched a membership. And I was like, if we just had 500 people say, yes, this would be game changing. 2444 people said yes. And then there was a friction point where you had marketing content, but you couldn't plan it on social media. So then your girl, well, the world is a dumpster fire in 2020 is like, you want.

Jasmine Star 00:16:18  To know what we need.

Jasmine Star 00:16:19  A tech company. So never written a line of code. But listen, if you're a girl who doesn't know how to become a photographer or doesn't know how to sell courses, doesn't know how to start a membership, and then decides you want to start a tech company, why not? So hire CTO, hire a team, we build out our own tech stack. We move everything over. And. The identity that I had to leave behind after doing all of those things was that I am not my creator.

Jasmine Star 00:16:43  I have a creator that my pride was so caught up with being like, I'll figure it out. Me, myself and I, let's go get it. Are you with it or not? You can't handle me. Was I did I have that energy? No, I had the chip on my shoulder. I joked that I had so many chips on my shoulder, I could bring out a basket of them and a side of guacamole because I was just like, I'm gonna do this. And then what happens when your mind is blank? Oh, two years of a Reagan of like, who do you say I am? Who do you say you are? Good. Now let's create.

Rory 00:17:22  So one thing I want all of you to think about right now is what is the identity you have for yourself, like right now? How do you think about yourself? What are you telling yourself about yourself? And I want to know how do you identify when you've bumped up against a limiting belief? Right. So you were talking about how there's facts or circumstances or experience something happens.

Rory 00:17:46  And it's not the thing that happens, but there's a belief that you form about what happens. And I feel like half the battle is realizing or identifying when I have established a belief that is deserving because it's subconscious. Right? It's like, I don't know, it's there, but the moment I go, like half the battle is going, oh my gosh, I can't believe I actually think this about myself. How do you set that? Sort of like internal alarm or that tripwire or that? Because I mean, you know, girl, you got swagger, Desmond. Like you got the swagger. But you have to have these moments where you go like, oh, I'm blocking myself every day. So how do you catch yourself? How do you catch? How do you. How do you know?

Jasmine Star 00:18:34  The good news. The good news is, the farther you get. In your career, the more self-development that's required. I just unexpectedly, I try to get away once a year by myself. I married my high school sweetheart.

Jasmine Star 00:18:46  I'm obsessed with my daughter. I don't like to be away from them. But what I know is when I go away and I get quiet, things come to me. The truth of the matter comes to me. And so I within like five days notice, booked a ticket to a place called Sensei in Lanai. And it was just six days of just quiet. I didn't take my laptop, I didn't go on social media, I just journaled and I did the work to figure this out. And one thing is, I didn't know the stories I was telling myself because the facts were just the facts. Like I would say, I'm slow. I didn't learn how to read until I was 11. I still don't know my multiplication tables. I don't know the capitals, I don't really know how to spell all that well. And so the story I told myself is I'm just slow. I'm just slow because I was just slow. And then somebody said, are you slow or do you just have your own process? And I will tell you, I felt like my whole world pulled out from under me the first time I saw.

Jasmine Star 00:19:36  Wait a minute. Same situation, different story. That was I wasn't standing in New York City and I was in a mastermind, and it was 2017, and he just looked at me and said, oh, this just isn't that just a different story. And everything in my life I looked through and I was just like, that's not true, that's not true, that's not true. And it became a disease, a disease that made me better. Every morning I look up and I simply say, that person's an expander. I literally up until yesterday I had a podcast interview and I the whole truth, my whole truth was I have to be in my content, I have to be in my content. And all of a sudden, she said, I just recorded content. I haven't created a new content in a year. The team is just repurposing. And I was like, what I didn't know the belief I had was that I must be the driver for the holding company. That's patently false. Now my brain is hardwired to start finding solutions.

Jasmine Star 00:20:31  This was yesterday. I woke up today and I was like, two ideas. 20, 27. I'm out. I could see. Not entirely. I get to create how I want to create. But how does a holding company subsist outside of like a single person? Like this is a one man risk. I get hit by a bus. Some of the businesses go, but for a certain amount of time, how do I build something that's beyond me? And that goes back to answering the question, challenging your beliefs or challenge the stories that you tell yourself. But most of it is just being around other people who will see it in you and invite you to tell yourself a different story. But now I go through everything. I go through everything about how I eat, how I work out, how I sleep, and I'm just deciding same set of beliefs. I don't need eight hours, but how might I expand to eight hours? These are just simple things that in everyday life, I'm looking into.

Rory 00:21:17  What are some of the limiting beliefs that you think aspiring creators struggle with? Like, I know you've you've coached a lot of people. You have a bunch of people in social curator. What are the things that you hear other people say about themselves that you're like, that's holding you back? And that's not actually true. That's just what you're allowing yourself to believe.

Jasmine Star 00:21:35  Yeah. So I very much mean I'm 50% holy and 50% hood. So depending on who I'm speaking to, I always want to know, like, do you want the nice sandwich? Because, like, the Holy Side would be like, well, you're you're great just the way you are. You show up as you. However you feel like it. And then the hood side is like, listen, I hate creating content, but I hate being poor more. I just so the the struggles that we all face are universal. I hate making content, I hate it, and then I.

Rory 00:22:07  Hate making content.

Jasmine Star 00:22:08  I dread it, I dread it now, I hate it, I hate it, I can't wait.

Rory 00:22:15  We make this into a meme. I just want a meme.

Jasmine Star 00:22:18  Way I am. Just like the day I made. It is the day I get my phone in drop dropping the Pacific. Peace. Thank you. Thank you for the ride. I'm getting off. I am, I hate it, but you want to know what I do? I do things I don't like to get unmeasurable results that other people won't. I just outlast. I'm a cockroach. I will outlast people. I am not the best, I am not brilliant. And the part of my personality is I will either attract you or repel you.

Rory 00:22:44  So I have to pause this right here. How many of you thought before what she just said? How many of you thought Jasmine Starr must love creating content?

Jasmine Star 00:22:55  I hate that all the time, y'all. That is a misnomer.

Rory 00:22:57  And when you believe that about her and then you, what that does for you is you go, I don't I don't like creating. Thank you so much.

Jasmine Star 00:23:08  Amen.

Rory 00:23:09  But now. Yeah. I can't be a Jasmine star. She must be. She just knows how to use all. All those, all those, like all the little, you know, plug ins on the app. And you say still creative and it's just like, she must. Just like you sit on there all day and figure out like, oh my gosh, how did you do that? Cool transition? And like, she must love it. That is so empowering to go. Like she hates it, but you're doing it and you've been doing it. How long have you hated it?

Jasmine Star 00:23:37  Since the beginning. Since you did it, y'all. So I started. I said I wanted to be a photographer. I didn't have money for a website. I didn't have money for a camera I was renting when somebody paid me for a session like $100, I would use that money and I would go rent a camera. I would rent memory cards, I would rent lenses. I never went in business.

Jasmine Star 00:23:54  I'm in Nashville. I am like in Ramsay country. They are like, approve. The way I ran my business, it was no debt on the front end. So at the time I didn't have money for a website, so I just used a free blogger blog. We did $100,000 in revenue on a blog. I missed those days. You want to know why I can rent wherever? However, nobody had to see anything. People came to it and it was just what it was. The minute things started turning visual, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it. And I'm a photographer. I like being on the other side of the camera, always and forever. But what I do is the same way. I hate working out, and I work out every single day, as you put it, on your calendar. And then it becomes a non-negotiable because I'm going to walk integrity to myself. I'm going to walk in integrity for my daughter. I'm going to walk in integrity because somebody else needs to see the piece of content that I dread making, but it's helping them do what the thing that they want to do.

Jasmine Star 00:24:40  If I'm standing in my purpose, I'm going to do things that are not a walk in the park. Because if we woke up and we thought that building a business should be a walk in the park, I'm going to tell you, you've been listening to the wrong gang person. It is anything but that. If it was that this room would be 100 X. It's not. You are the far and the few in between. And now the difference between me and you is I'll put it on my calendar, and I will put a whole day every month to make iPhone videos, and I will do a whole day doing podcast, but there are 22 working days. And so that means that I get 20 days that I don't have to make content. Hey, I'll take that, I will take that, I will take that.

Rory 00:25:17  So I want to come back to the limiting beliefs. Now that you see in other people that fell off the journey, never got on the bandwagon to start. And you go like, here's some of the things that I see in podcasters, YouTubers, whatever content creators or just entrepreneurs in general.

Rory 00:25:32  And you have this whole tech world that you're kind of like now part of. What do you think are the most, some of the most dangerous, limiting beliefs that creators have today that they don't realize they have?

Jasmine Star 00:25:45  I've always maintained that social media or creating content reveals your weakest points, and so what you allow to get in the way because it's literally you're allowing it, you're choosing it. It's not like I don't feel like it. No, you're putting yourself on something on the in between. And we all have like three common things. Somebody does it better. I don't look how I want to look and I feel cringe. Hear that again and again and again. And I just, I think in such a fortuitous Situation. How lucky your lives, how fortunate. How pat on the head and white picket fence. How turkey in the oven and a two car garage. How lucky that you didn't. You got to go on family vacations. How lucky for you to say that's not what I want to do.

Jasmine Star 00:26:31  Optionality is a gift, but y'all are standing in front of a buffet table with an empty plate saying, I just don't know what I want to put on it. Yeah, if you have tasted hunger, if you have not had that, you will never go back. I will do whatever I need to do to get to where I want to go. If tomorrow they say that you have the social media is gone. You have to ride two dolphins and smoke a cigar. The water. Okay, get me flipper. I will do whatever. And not everybody's like that and that's okay. But I'm just going to say I'm going to win by default. That's it. You're better than me. And I'll win because I'll at last.

Rory 00:27:10  Yeah. Reach it. You know, you talk a lot about generations, your, your, your grandmother and and that kind of thing. And you go, it's dawning on me as you're talking like, what were the things that our grandparents hated doing that they had to do? And how much more intense was that? You know, I remember seeing this meme during Covid that was like your grandparents lived through the depression, fought in wars, took bullets.

Rory 00:27:41  You're being asked to sit on the couch and watch TV, like, deal with it. And I was like, that's such a good a good perspective. And it's just like, oh, I have to make cringeworthy videos. It's like, imagine how hard it was for a woman to start a business as an entrepreneur in 1950.

Jasmine Star 00:27:57  Women couldn't buy their own house in the 80s. Women couldn't buy their own house until 1986. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy that my grandmother couldn't start a business, that my mother couldn't start a business. She was relegated to Avon. It was actually a Jaffray, but very few people. I mean, does anybody know Jaffray? Hey. The real. Oh, geez. Okay, okay. Just went door to door. That was how my mother started her business. And so I just think what an opportunity that all of us have to do, right? By the people who sacrificed so much for us to be here. And this is indiscriminate of the relationships that you have with your parents.

Jasmine Star 00:28:32  This is indiscriminate. The relationship you have with your grandparents, they did what they had to do to survive. And so however we feel about that. Thank you. But this right here, I once read that the minute you heal yourself, you're healing seven generations back and seven generations forward. I adopted oh, I can't even talk. We I struggled with the family. And in 2020, our daughter found us. After three years of just a really hard search, a really hard search. It was a hard time in my life and the career was taking off and I was like, what am I doing? I really want this. And what I realized was that the reason it had taken me three years for her to meet with me because I needed to become a different person. I actually had to make the decision to heal and deal with a lot of stuff in my past that I kept on saying, I'm just going to keep on going. I'm going to keep on thriving. I'm going to keep on pushing, because the thriving was knowing what it was that I wasn't naming.

Jasmine Star 00:29:27  And so I became an addict of success. I became an addict of work, so I didn't have to face things I didn't want. And then all of a sudden I realized, I need to go back and I need to fix what's going on internally. And the minute I did that, I realized that this child is going to be different and I will be able to hold space because she's going to go on her own journey because she doesn't have one mom, she has two. She doesn't have one, dad, she has two. And so I just always thank myself that the that building a business, people think it's because we want to step into our next version. You know, building a business is the greatest self-development practice we can ever get into. And so I think to myself, business brought me here. Now it's on me to go back and change things so that other generations don't have to read the same Routines.

Rory 00:30:08  Oh. It's good. That's good. So what are some of the other things that you don't like doing that you do that you think other people in this space must learn how to do, if they want to build the kind of reach and the impact that you've had.

Rory 00:30:27  So kind of like in this vein of social media to go. I mean, that's, that's that's shocking to me. I didn't even know that about you. Like, I would not have said that if someone would ask me. So I'm going, what are the other things that you have gotten yourself to do, even though you consciously don't want to do them? But you go, these are the things that are necessary in order to have the impact that I want to have in order to create what I want to create and what you have created.

Jasmine Star 00:30:55  Everything, like the myth, starts with a story about a woman who wants to bake cakes, and she loves baking cakes. And then the bigger her business gets, she stops baking cakes. So when we start a business, we start with something that we're good at, that we want that we want to empower people. And then the more you grow, the less you do the thing that you want. And so I've just realized that over the scope of my career, I'm going to do a lot of things I don't want to do to get a result that few people have.

Jasmine Star 00:31:21  So for me, I just always try to embody the humility of saying, I will do anything. I will do anything in the business to not slow down. And so I find myself doing a lot of things, like we had a copywriter who didn't work out. So it's before launch. What are you going to do, abdicate it? Turn it over 100% to ChatGPT? Absolutely not. I'm gonna get back and write the dang funnels. I write my own content because it's my voice. I don't want to do those things. I write every single podcast on my own. I write every single YouTube video on my own. I go out and have 20 minute calls with our customers. These are not things I want to do, but I want a result. And if I want a result, I have to ask myself, how do I get it? And then do I have the willingness to do the work that other people don't want to do? And the answer is yes, but I will tell you.

Jasmine Star 00:32:07  Most of the days are not filled with things I want to do, and I can't wait for the day that that's not the case. But for me, 80% of the things I'm doing right now I don't want to do. I just happen to be good at them. And I'm filling in the gap and I'm serving a bigger purpose. But here again, I mean, if you guys came here to get riled up, I'm sorry because I feel like I'm rain on a parade. But to me, I just always want to speak my truth. And so that when you see, man, that looks so easy, it's because there was a lot of reps behind the scenes that a lot of people don't see.

Rory 00:32:34  So what is the thing in your business right now that you know you need to do that you're not doing? I just want you to think about that. Is there something right now that you know this? If I did this thing, it would move me forward. But I don't really want to do that thing, because what I'm hearing from you is wanting to do.

Rory 00:32:58  It has nothing to do with your decision making process about whether or not you do it. is the only the only part of the decision making processes. Is it necessary? And when you use that word humility, I think that's that's a really beautiful way to use that word of like, I'm never allowing myself to be too good to where I'm above doing what needs to be done. I think that's I think that's beautiful.

Jasmine Star 00:33:28  I think that when I walked into this building, I look at this and I think it's like purely aspirational. It's so amazing, it's so beautiful. But I immediately knew that when I came in here, like, if this was my building and the bathroom wasn't clean and a teammate had to do it and they were falling through, I would 100% clean the bathroom. It's got to get done. People are coming in the doors.

Rory 00:33:46  So from the bathroom dirty.

Jasmine Star 00:33:48  No no.

Rory 00:33:48  No no. Oh my gosh.

Jasmine Star 00:33:51  Not at all. But like it's that and like we all have digital.

Jasmine Star 00:33:53  We have digital storefronts. And so so many of us are just saying, okay, I'm just gonna put that in a storage closet. I'm just not gonna clean the bathroom right now. It's like how you do one thing. It's how you do everything.

Rory 00:34:03  All right. I want to hear some questions from you all. You may never get a chance like this to have access to to Jasmine. This up close and personal. So who has a question? All right. Betsy. Oh, okay. We got to. So let's let's go to Betsy first and then we'll come to Stephanie and then we'll stay back in here.

Jasmine Star 00:34:21  If it's possible. Can we start with. And so this is me. Just people say she's bossy, know I'm a boss. So let's start just the question, and I will ask other following things to connect the dots.

Betsy 00:34:32  So when you said that you had this $197 course or something, and then it evolved into over $1 million, like that's usually like we that's the glory.

Betsy 00:34:43  Can you help us understand the story behind that glory?

Jasmine Star 00:34:47  The story behind the glory was I needed money, like legit. So we bought a house and the estimations flew off the roof, and I made a bet on a course I had hired you guys, this is the first time I ever got into the world. I didn't know digital courses ever existed. So I was like, you know what I'm do? I'm gonna teach everything I know about building a personal brand. I sold the tickets for $2,000 to an in-person event, and then I hired a video team to do it. I got sold, y'all. They saw me coming. They were like, okay, you're going to need five videographers. You're going to need a DP. You're going to need two producers. And all of a sudden I got this massive bill and I was like, oh my God. Then our house budget exploded and all of a sudden I didn't see enough revenue coming in. I completely panicked, and I was I was like, okay, what can I do right now? I put together the course in less than a month.

Jasmine Star 00:35:32  I recorded it entirely on my own. I had no idea what a landing page was. I had no idea what a webinar was. I had no, I didn't have like a funnel. I knew none of this. I just sat down for three weeks and I was like, okay, here's a checklist, do the checklist. And here's the crazy part is we built it once and we didn't change anything for a year. So I look back at that. That was like the simplest thing I had ever done in my business to bring in $1 million. So people would talk about like the glory days, I would be like, that was the glory days. That's when like we were getting a lead for $0.33. I was like the first time I had ever paid. I was like, oh my gosh, I have to spend 3000.

Betsy 00:36:07  Did you get those people from did you already have an audience that you sold to or.

Jasmine Star 00:36:12  No, I never, I well, I was a photographer, so I was selling to art directors and things of that nature.

Jasmine Star 00:36:17  But no, this is the first time. And people are like, how are you doing this on Instagram? I would just get like, how are you building on Instagram? My clients were coming to me. I had all inbound leads I didn't do. I had never paid a penny in marketing. And so all of a sudden people are like, how are you doing this? And I was like, how am I doing this? So I just created the course and I put it out and somebody had said, oh, there's this thing called retargeting. I was like, I don't know. Retargeting is like putting like $3,000 for people who signed up and you could show them an ad. I made one graphic that's like, doors are closing. And I was like $3,000, like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Like, should I be doing this and that? Launch 255,000. The next time we launched, we didn't use any money and had made $300,000. And then the next time people are like, Jasmine, you're getting leads for nothing, spend money and then we would fit $13,000.

Betsy 00:36:59  But where are you getting those leads from?

Jasmine Star 00:37:02  I went on Instagram, on Instagram Live. I went like three times a week and I was like, hey, I do this thing, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I was just like, DM me. And so I just sit in my DMs. This was like pre mini chat. Still to this day I will use mini chat, but like for instance we had a job listing. It's pretty important for me. And so I said comment this word and people thought they were getting the mini chat and I was like, Hey Selena, thanks so much, I appreciate it. Checked out your profile. I'm hyper personalizing it. I am in my DMs like the market talks to y'all, so market talks to you.

Rory 00:37:32  I'm wondering if any of you have a limiting belief where you go like oh that that worked back then, but that wouldn't work now. How many of you are thinking a little bit of that right now? Okay, Karen.

Rory 00:37:44  Mayor Cunningham, how do you build your entire business right now? What would you say is the number one source of new leads and how people find out? Like, what's the one behavior that you do every week.

Karen 00:37:55  Every Monday I go live on TikTok for an hour on a God approved device called an Android to follow the Garden of Eden. We can't be friends, but you can buy from me. But anyway, I go live on TikTok. I have somebody in the comments and they read the questions. Questions answer questions, answer questions. Answer. I put out 52 pieces of content every day across seven platforms, and I answer their questions question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. And people are so busy getting ready. You've done nothing and you've failed the people that need what you have.

Rory 00:38:29  And you guys hear what Trent said this morning? How many hours does he spend a week? An hour a day, even now, an hour a day? Responding to DMs, I know that Ed Millet did the same thing.

Rory 00:38:43  He's been off social for a year. That's part of why he's been off. He would be in there an hour a day because what's amazing is you're like, where do I get the leads? It's like the person commenting in the video. It's like the person that's sitting there watching you. And I'm always sitting there going like, oh, there's only seven people here. No, it's like there's seven people here. Like there's seven leads, like real humans sitting there.

Jasmine Star 00:39:08  I know you do live coaching and we'll move to the next question, but like I would do a poll, a yes or no poll that would help qualify like a lead. So for instance, I might say do you do over seven figures? I have a mastermind for seven figure female founders. I'm like, do you do over seven figures? Everybody who answered yes. So now Instagram updated that even if they have a private account before, you couldn't send a message to a private account. If they respond on a poll, you can message them.

Jasmine Star 00:39:32  And so they said yes. And I went and I messaged every single person. I just sat in the airport for two hours. And everybody who said no, the vast majority of people said no. I said, hey, so nice to meet you. Here's a freebie. I just copied the link into a freebie. So I'm growing my newsletter list for free, and these people feel like they've been served. So there is a way to figure out how to build engagement if we're just paying attention.

Rory 00:39:54  You're saying you're using the free feature of a poll inside your Instagram Stories to do this?

Jasmine Star 00:40:00  You can take the girl out of the ghetto. You can't do the ghetto of the girl. I will use everything for free. I'm gonna use everything for free. And it's me. I'm in there. And here's the thing. So if people are like, oh, I don't know if that's the best use of my time, I'm not doing it so much. So to be benevolent, although it's great, I am so clearly listening to the market and the audience.

Jasmine Star 00:40:16  It's their words that are informing our messaging. It's their words that are forming our copy. It's those people who I said, do you want to hop on a zoom for 20 minutes? Like, so what happens is I look at this as the best use of my time for research and development, and I am like, you're responding, but you are giving me gold. Screenshot, screenshot, screenshot. Put them into slack and I just look over them. What's going on? What are the what are the common themes? I'm going to use these words and serve them up something they want.

Rory 00:40:40  How many hours a week are you in your in your direct messages today?

Jasmine Star 00:40:44  Oh, I'm in my DMs probably 45 minutes a day.

Rory 00:40:49  Every day.

Jasmine Star 00:40:50  Oh, yeah. Seven days a week.

Rory 00:40:51  That's where you get the leads. That's where you get the leads. That's amazing. Okay. I think we have. Yeah. Go ahead. That was.

Speaker 7 00:40:58  Absolutely amazing. So obviously, part of your whole essence is the chip on your shoulder.

Speaker 7 00:41:07  So and and the toughness that you've had to overcome. So for what advice would you give your grandchildren that haven't had that same chip because you provided such a better life for them to become successful and, and not come from that chip concept, but what advice would you give them to maintain and become successful?

Rory 00:41:33  Yeah, I have a very similar question, which is when you come from nothing and then you have a lot. How do you make sure your two. Yeah, six and eight don't, don't grow up to be entitled little turds.

Jasmine Star 00:41:45  I will say I'm gonna give myself a lot of grace and say I will do it wrong. But what I hope to say is that my daughter doesn't hear advice that she hasn't seen manifested in front of her, and that my daughter will raise her children the same way. So if I want my daughter to be benevolent, then she must see benevolence. And if I want my daughter to be kind, she may see kindness. And so if I go to her and I say it is better to give than it is to receive.

Jasmine Star 00:42:08  If she has not seen me giving, she will do nothing with it. And so, in my mind, I hope that the advice I give is just an extension of everything she's seen. Thank you, thank you.

Rory 00:42:17  That's good. Okay, Stephanie. And then we'll come to MJ.

MJ 00:42:20  So you've obviously gone through a lot of periods of time when you're uncomfortable, when you're stepping into something that you've never done before. I'm probably in the most uncomfortable space I've ever been. And I come from a place of always, like knowing what I'm doing and where I'm going and how I'm going to get there, and I've done, in my eyes, I crossed my T's. I've done all the math. Super nerd. Maybe like some other people here. And I'm in a space that's super, super challenging. How do you find the the will, the way, or the mantra to refocus yourself to be like, it's good to be uncomfortable, you're going to really like this.

Jasmine Star 00:42:55  I'm not that evolved yet.

Jasmine Star 00:42:57  I'm just going to be honest with you. So there were times during my darkest days that I just said, you have to be thankful because you now understand people in a way you've never been able to understand them before. Because I went from one thing to another. It doesn't mean that it was easy. It was very, very difficult. But there was always the next thing. And so if somebody said, yeah, but I just feel so stuck, I was like, get unstuck, let's go. Like, I had to be so broken into a thousand pieces that there's this Japanese art form. There's like, if they break a bowl and they put it back together with gold and it's stronger, I'm stronger. And so I just want to say, I see you. I don't have any words of wisdom other than every single day. Do something that gets you closer to clarity, and it's not going to be clear, and it's not going to feel clear. And it's only in retrospect that you look back and be like that conversation on October 13th, 2024 was the light that I didn't see, and I had to see it 18 other times, continue taking action because action is the antidote to the uncertainty.

Jasmine Star 00:43:47  And until you do more actions, is that clear? The idea or the next thing will become have the humility to do the quick tests. Have an identity that will start something and then immediately kill it. If you know it's not where it is that you want to go, that's hard and that's scary because they're safe. Or we can do a cash infusion and be like, this is amazing, but there's a cost to everything that we decide. And I'm like, that's not the cost I want to pay. I would rather run further into a financial runway than to spend money just to get a quick infusion. And then I lost time in building to the thing that's going to get me to where I'm going to go. I'm tired of short ladders.

Rory 00:44:19  All right, MJ.

MJ 00:44:20  Can you talk to us about balance? How? Because you're so on all the time, and I feel like my life lesson is like, calm down. So because it's caused problems in my marriage and my health, and that's why my business even exists, is helping entrepreneurs find that balance.

MJ 00:44:37  So how do you stay on? How do you build the reps and the resilience to not burn out?

Jasmine Star 00:44:43  So this is not for everybody. I just live and die by my calendar. And so I'm gracious with myself in my calendar in that if it's not in my calendar, I'm not doing it. So my workday is from 9 to 5. I naturally it's disgusting. I wake up around 430 every morning. I will pray, meditate, I will work out. I will do all of my self stuff early in the morning because I want to be home to wake up my daughter, do breakfast, do the mom thing, and then I go into work. So my workdays are my workdays, and at 5:00 my husband sends our daughter and is like, you're done. That's difficult for me because I want to be like, just one more little thing. But I just realized that life is too short. So my, my, my balance is 5:00 and on, and I do breakfast with her. And then JD and Luna come home for lunch.

Jasmine Star 00:45:27  So we do breakfast, lunch and dinner most days together. And I want to be very clear, I am not a mom who's an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur who's a mom. There is not a right or wrong, but we understand the balance in our home that I am not expected to be the primary care taker. We've divided and conquered in very different ways. That is not for everybody. I do not advocate it, but it works for us. And this is how I've found balance, even though I work quite a bit.

Rory 00:45:53  Are you still working a lot of nights and weekends at this point when necessary?

Jasmine Star 00:45:56  So with this new offer. Okay, so built out a sales team and a coaching team in about 32 days. Not recommended. We were going to go in and start the sales process, and I was like, I could figure out sales, I've done sales. And then I just realized that when you get into the world of high ticket sales, there's a whole different beast. So decided to invest $25,000 into a consultant.

Jasmine Star 00:46:15  I was like, okay, they're like, here's everything you need to do. I was like, oh, oh, and this is on top of the things that you're doing. So then you have to go to my business partner and my husband and I say, okay, we need to negotiate a few terms. I'm going to be starting at eight. I will be ending at six. I'm going to be needing Saturdays. I will be batching these things out. I will be watching these trainings while I'm at the gym. I will find a way to get it done in 30 days. Are you with me? And he's just like. Absolutely. Because we know that we have to make short term sacrifices for long term benefits. This is not an in perpetuity thing. So recently probably a little bit more than normal. But I can already see I see I've not worked weekends in over a month, which is great, but I can now see like it's not on me. The business is going beyond that and that feels really, really good.

Rory 00:47:01  We got time for one more quick one.

Betsy 00:47:03  Jasmine, thank you so much.

Jasmine Star 00:47:04  Love how you're segmenting your audience because I am one of your potential consistent ten KS. So thank you. My question is we talked earlier about serving two avatars with messaging. What's it like to serve two teams from the holding company and the SaaS company? How has your leadership changed? What's new, what's surprising? So our executive team is part. So one piece of advice my mentor had told me, who's your ma's team? If you had to go and start your life on Mars and you need to start a business there, who do you take? It's savage. But immediately it was like, got it. So they said on our executive team, and we're incentivizing them, just like Rory with a portion of performance based profit. I don't call it profit sharing. That's a very specific word, but performance based revenue growth sharing and every company in the holding company sits with its own leadership team. And so when I sit as a advisor, I am not on that on that team.

Jasmine Star 00:47:57  And so for me, I've always realized, can you repeat the question again? I want to make sure that I'm answering just the question. I just want to know what your leadership style has changed. How has your leadership style changed evolved? What surprised you in showing up in both worlds? Oh, this was like a big coming to when I got really quiet. It's I have to let people in. I have to trust that people will do a job better than I will. And the minute I did, everything opened. So now I just find operators, I clock operators, and I'm like, where are you at? Who are you? What are you about? And then I had to make the decision to cognitively say, I trust you. And the minute that trust is betrayed, then we're out. But as long as you and I know that. And there's clear KPIs, key performance indicators. Are you hitting your metrics? Here's an SOP. Can you follow that? Can you? Idiot.

Jasmine Star 00:48:40  Can you fit? Can you solve your own problem? Can you come up with revenues of growth? I look for two things in a team player. Can you make money? Can you operate? We do that. Then. My job as a personal brand is to float all visibility across all the brands. So in the future when I'm talking about. So we built out a program that's leveraged into a company that I've advisory equity in. So I'm promoting them within my program. So we're going to start finding ways to serve the same demographic across all companies in the holding company. So the bigger the personal brand gets, the more benefits that the companies get to have as well. Thank you.

Rory 00:49:12  Jasmine. I think when I think about the theme of like everything you talked about, which is I think the theme of your life and what you're going out to speak on, you know, you started us off with the I cannot lose if I do not quit. And this has been nothing but an edifying look back on your life and your journey and your generational journey all the way back to your grandparents.

Rory 00:49:37  And I just want to acknowledge you and thank you for never giving up. Because you inspire your audience and you inspire all of us on that same journey. So thank you for your resilience and thank you for keeping going. For always getting back up. And thanks for being with us here today.

Jasmine Star 00:49:53  Before we end the show, I want to remind you of three things. Number one, you are the reason I make the show. If this is positively impacted you, I'm honored. Together, we're doing hard things and we're going to continue to grow. Number two, please share this episode with somebody you think would benefit from it. Remember, doing hard things together makes it a bit easier. And number three, I'd love to get an Instagram DM from you know, I'm being honest, I read and I answer my own DMs, send me a chat because I would be honored to know what resonated most with you from this episode. I'm going to say it again. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.