Behind the Scenes of Building a Bold Pitch

0:00If you've been feeling stuck in your business and wondering if you're the reason it's not growing faster, I have something for you. I'm hosting a free, no-pitch, live class called Three Money Beliefs That Made Me Millions. And I'm sharing the exact mindset shifts that helped me go from million-dollar years to million-dollar months. This isn't fluff. It is a surprising strategy that changed everything for me, and I want to share it with you. Like I said, no pitch, no fluff, just you and me talking about how we shift our beliefs around money to make you millions. Save your seat now at jasminestar.com forward slash millions.

0:33I can't wait to see you there. there's a few things that i can't read in the text message but let me just keep the main thing the main thing do you believe in signs and wonders yesterday my husband and i took our daughter out on a duffy we live here in newport beach and i texted him i was working and i said hey let's just meet and do sunset at the water because it's been a long day and he packed some snacks and he said, hey, I had an idea and it kind of came to me. And he keeps this notebook in his car. So he wrote this audio visual blog podcast. Here's an intro. The season you're in, wrestling with the next thing to build, what that wrestling really looks like.

1:21Maybe you could talk about the offers, how you're testing different offers, how you're sitting on advisory roles and you haven't really spoke about that. And he said, maybe you should talk to people about the opportunity that has come across to possibly create content. So tell me he's not my soulmate. I said, I'm working on this right now. This idea came to me and I'm just like, I'm not sure of all the moving pieces. And they probably think that I'm doing it wrong. And he said, then just do it. He's like, because if I saw this and you saw this, just do it. And so what are we doing? I am creating a vlog to document something that likely won't work.

2:02So at the time of this recording, it is late February. It's February 27th. And I connected with a business owner to do a one-minute documentary about her business. But the backstory has been and is, I feel like I'm in this awkward state as I grow. My businesses have grown and I have changed and I actually don't know how to show up online. And I think that creating content has become really difficult for me because I'm caught between two spaces and two places. And we've been stuck for a while. And I hate even talking about it. I hate even admitting it, but it's just where we're at. And so JD, my husband and business partner said, well, why don't you just talk about that?

2:45And I said, yeah, but it's unstructured. Like, what is there to talk about? I actually don't know how to create the type of content that will reposition me to serve a different audience. And then he reminded me that it's okay for us to create a piece of content that lights us up, that puts us in front of people, and whoever watches it was supposed to be the people who watch it. And he's like, in the messy middle, it's okay to say it's the messy middle. So welcome to the messy middle. That is my content business life. So the businesses are growing and we're still creating content. We have a very high output of content.

3:19But what I don't exactly have access to are bigger and different businesses to do it in a different way. And so a few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast called My First Million. And at the end of the podcast, I am talking about in the last two minutes of the podcast, one of the hosts, Sean, says, hey, we are looking for a correspondent. Now, time out. I should probably go back and say, I don't think it was a planned idea. I think he was excited about a conversation they're having. And they said, we should expand our podcast. So Sam Parr and Sean Puri are the co-host of My First Million. I listen to their podcast twice a week.

4:00And they had said that they wish they had more time to interview other business owners and do a deep dive of that business and create content around it. I immediately thought, oh, well, I wonder if I could try this for my podcast to reach out to other people to see if they would be able to create content. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute. I have always learned the best by being on the ground floor. And this has nothing to do with like levels and humility and like, why would I do this or spend my time? This has something to do with opportunity. I think that there is about one in a million chance that this thing will actually work.

4:35When I listened back to the podcast, I think it was just a flippant idea that they said, That'd be fun. I don't even know if it's a real thing. But I am going to proceed as if it's the real thing. I am going to create a one-minute piece of content. And I'm going to be creating a vlog around the journey of creating a one-minute piece of content. And then we're going to see what happens with it. We're going to see that likely nothing will happen with it. And I'm okay with it. But I think at this point in my career, it's really important to do things that make me uncomfortable, to do things that will possibly put me in front of other people.

5:10and to flex a muscle that I know I have been developing for over a decade. I can create content. Now the difficulty challenge invitation becomes, can I create content in a way that is compelling and narrative and less about me and more about my perspective of the business and those details that are going to be included. My daughter is having a meltdown. So I think it's pretty much our time to end this conversation. I sent a text message to Sam Parr, co-host of my first million to say, listen, you've been on my podcast. I'm a paying member. One of your businesses called Hampton, an executive coaching program.

5:47We're homies. Does this conversation make you awkward? That there's the possibility that I want to apply. There's a few things that I can't read in the text message, but let me just keep the main thing, the main thing. Apply. I'll give you his email address and you can even text him about it, but have low low expectations there's this scene in dumb and dumber where jim carrey is looking across from the girl he wants to date like he's looking for samsonite and so she says i wouldn't date you if you were the last guy on earth and jim carrey looks at her and says so you're saying there's a chance.

6:26I think he said there might be a chance. Today, we are going to go to Mary's shop, the shop forward in Santa Ana, California. It's about a 20 minute drive from Newport Beach and we're going to go there. We're going to collect the role for the vlog and for the video that we want to use for the correspondent entree. Entree? Entry. Entree. So here's the truth of it. We were working within a set of parameters. I made a list of businesses that I think would be interesting to interview. So there's a few things in the back of my mind. I wanted it to be visually interesting. I wanted it to have a compelling story.

7:02I also needed to know this person personally because I had to reach out and ask for an inside look at their business. I also needed somebody who would be willing to meet with me in a relatively short amount of time. We are now going on about almost two weeks since I heard the podcast to us recording today. So everything had to happen as quickly as possible. So it was proximity. It was visually interesting. It was somebody I knew. It was something that was close that I could drive to. And it was somebody who can work pretty fast. So given those five things, Mary shot to the top really quick. Just this morning at 7.13, my husband and I are sitting on that couch having a conversation around how we can condense this story into 60 seconds.

7:43It is so difficult to tell a story, have a point of view, and serve somebody really well within a short amount of time. and I think I was feeling a lot of anxiety because I really want to honor Mary's business and story. I really want to make something that I think is cool, interesting, and can flex a muscle that I think I uniquely possess. And at the same time, I feel like I'm putting myself pressure because I'm documenting the vlog and I'm doing this 60 second video. And I just decided, just let it all settle that whatever happens is going to be a creative, fun endeavor on how to learn how to use storytelling and marketing in a new way.

8:14So there was a couple of things that we took into consideration. Number one, we wanted to make sure who is the viewer? Because if you're telling a story, you have to shape it for who's actually watching it. So I kept on saying, I'm a little bit confused. Is the viewer the podcast host for my first million? Because that's a different story that I need to tell. Is the viewer somebody who's interested in businesses, period? Or is the viewer looking for a fun, captivating story randomly on social media? because the way that you pick the viewer has a really big impact on the video overall. And so I was talking to JD saying, I'm making a video for my first million, the podcast host.

8:53And he pushed back and he said, I think that there's a different way for you to flex a muscle that feels true to you. If other people are making a video on a story of a business, he's like, you not having a lot of experience need to come in and tell a story that nobody else is telling. So he's like, so you tell the story from your perspective. And I was like, okay, I love that idea. It makes me very nervous because the video crew, the video crew, myself and Aisha have gone back and forth on who is the viewer and what's the angle. And this morning I stood in my bathroom talking to my husband again, because I started getting ready.

9:30And then he texted him, was in the kitchen. I was like, help me come talk to me while I'm getting ready with my makeup, because I need to, I need to nail this down. and what we realized what we realized through all of this was that without a plan we're not going to get what we want I need to make a decision before I go and shoot because what I was telling him was the worst thing that you could ever say is I'm going to fix it in post I'll figure it out in post I even said I'm going to record the entry three the intro of this video three different ways and then I'm going to pick the best and I'm going to story tell and he says you know a good story is never there's three different there's three different starting points he's like you You got to pay one.

10:07You got to go in. You got to commit. We've learned this lesson before. I created a video for a company called the giving keys. I did it. Oh my gosh. I think like 10 or 12 years ago. I'll link to that over there. You can check out a little bit of what we did. Well, I loved chronicling the story. I love the story. It was a great story. I learned so many things about it, but it didn't have a clear point of view. It was more of a documentation more than it was a story and a narrative. So what is a story? A story is a beginning point, a point, a reason why you care or something that happens and an endpoint, a resolution, why you have hope, an ending, a clear definitive end.

10:41And I didn't have that. And he says, we've learned this before. You have to start the story at the beginning and carry that narrative with every single shot that you're taking. So drum roll. I decided that I'm not going to start off with the hooky hooks. I'm not going to do the YouTube hook. Do you want to know how to build a 10 figure business starting up with nothing but an idea. I thought about the very noble charitable aspect. This company has donated more than$6 million to charity in the last few years. I've also started with the super gimmicky one. Sean, sell this sweater and be able to donate money to charity water.

11:22Everything just felt a little bit off. And so I think I'm going to take a slightly different view and I'm going to talk about ideas. Why do so many of us have ideas? And yet a few people are the people who take those ideas and make them into a business. And then I'm going to probably say in the long form video that a business never starts with one great idea. It's a series of small ideas that you use to prove an overall concept. And then the better the ideas become over time, the stronger the business becomes over time. And so I think I'm just going to make a 60 second piece around ideation, around deployment, and at the end, work in a very customized approach to my first million podcast.

11:59Oh, as a side note, this isn't even part of the questions, but I want to just document this just for me. I'm thinking about how do I get Sean this video? He said, email me. And then he gave his email address on the podcast. And so he wants me to send a link, but I don't want to send the link because sending a link puts me in competition with everybody else. So my idea, and I don't know if this is going to work. So my idea is to print a sweater at the shop that's customized to his podcast. Then what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to package the sweater and make it look really cool. I'm going to send it and I'm not going to put anything else other than a note.

12:34And on that note, it's going to be, I think right now, and it's going to be jazminstar.com forward slash my first million. So I think my goal is for him to open it up. He sees a custom sweater and all it is, is jazminstar.com forward slash my person million. And when he gets there, I want to create a landing page on my website that actually is the letter. Hi, Sean. Hi, Sam. You got this because I made this and I want to put together my corresponding. I need a better way to position my brand as somebody who knows what it is she's doing. Not just an email. Here's a link about my video. I want to be a correspondent.

13:09So there's a lot of behind the scenes of like, how do you stick out? I think good marketing is just capturing somebody's attention. And I think that if I send a physical product with like interest, intrigue, Like, what is this website? Where am I going? If I can get him there to the site, then I can explain who I am, what the video is about. And then my pitch as a correspondent. Oftentimes we stop ourselves from putting ideas out because we're afraid of what people are going to say. And so he said, I love this. I want to make merch that says, send it. And I was listening to this podcast thinking, Oh, I'm going to make a video to be a correspondent.

13:38Okay. So I had, um, we're going to make a sweater that says, just send it. And then below it, it's going to be, it's going to say no small voice up, which is very much like on par, like it's what they talk about on their podcast. So I made a sweater that's very, very, very nuanced. It shows that I'm a listener. It shows that I'm paying attention. And so the most important shot is to show that sweater. And then the most important thing is to connect the sweater that they received in a box to the actual video. Okay. So how does this type of content help anybody else besides let's just, let's just, let's just be very honest.

14:11This content will inevitably, hopefully help me the most, help me the most get attention from people I want to get attention from. But if you make a piece of content that's just only ever self-serving to you, it actually falls flat. So the second person who I want to really it to benefit is my first million podcast hosts, because they can see somebody else who can create content on behalf of their business. Somebody else is creating to expand their brand. But I actually think that the only way I win, like deep down for me, my biggest win is to not become a correspondent. My biggest win is to not create this vlog.

14:46My biggest win is to create what I firmly believe, that ideas are nothing without execution. That ideas, so many of us have ideas and then we hold ourselves back from actually executing on them. Mary had ideas and decided not to do them until she had an idea that she couldn't resist and not do. the piece of content I am creating would be the hill that I die on. Have an idea, use that idea, go and do the idea. And I think to myself, if what I create on behalf of my first million or on behalf of Jevon Star is there's a series of ideas out there that are just begging to become a business that can change your life.

15:20If that's the hill I die on and that's the piece of content that I put out, I would feel very proud about that. We're on our way to a warehouse right now. And I think the warehouse might be very interesting visually to shoot because we have a lot of moving pieces. We have, I'm thinking boxes, shipping, inventory. We have merchandise. We have colors. In order for us to storytell, visual components actually keep things going. I have this idea that I try on a bunch of different sweaters of the same size so that we can do a really cool transition. I don't know if we have those sweaters. So we have ideas and then we have plan B.

15:55So we're hoping that the warehouse actually works in our favor. One of the things that we learned by making vlogs is you have to have a visual component that's always changing. So having somebody talk to camera for a long period of time or having the same scene for a long period of time, it causes somebody to get distracted or move away from the screen or fast forward. But when you have a constantly changing visual, it keeps somebody engaged and interested and pushes up that watch time for vlogs and videos. I met Mary, I think four or five years ago in Austin, Texas. So we were there as part of an organization called National Angels.

16:26It's an organization that really empowers families who are taking care of children in foster care. We went out there in December for a fundraiser. We were raising money and funds to shop for kiddos in foster care there in Texas. And she was there on behalf of her business. Now, the Shop Forward has done collaborations with National Angels. So we were there. I met her. I didn't know that we're virtually neighbors. And so things worked out in our favor. And we've stayed in contact by way of social media. And it felt really nice to say, hey, I know that you care about charities. I know I want more information and light on your business.

16:58Would you be willing to do this? And I think that having established that relationship, even though we just met in person for a few hours in Austin, we did something really cool together. We are shooting a vlog. This is the story of behind us doing this. And so we're talking about the process of like, how are we going to do all of these things? We have a list of shots we want to take. We're not attached to anything. We think that everything's going to be exploratory. I think that we're going to get everything we need easily for the 60 second and then for the vlog it's way more real life. I know what I'm going to do.

17:28Can I try it on? Oh yeah. Okay okay. I mean it is kind of my size though. We get swag? We're getting swag. We're getting swag. Okay perfect for Southern California wear. So it's light denim lined. Look at this quality stitching on the top front. Now if I didn't want it to be too much over the top I would just have my cuffs but can you just see how you're walking and if i wanted to i'd pop one collar on the side i mean i mean are we here are we here mary are we here so my four things would probably be work jd luna books okay let's be real i am not coming to the shop forward and not walking away with some stylish swag so I come in looking one way and I leave looking cute looking fresh looking ready now hold on hold on tats supporting LA fire relief hold on I mean oh my god if you cut me open I'd leave dodger blue oh my gosh are we a look are we a vibe I mean let's go Thank you, Mary.

18:36Okay, let's talk about what worked really well today. Mary and Ashley run a very tight ship. They were prepared. They had everything they thought we could have needed. They were so organized walking us through the warehouse. They informed their team that we were going to be there. They made us feel so special. They took great care of us. They were super amenable to what the shots that we needed. They worked with the embroidery side of the business to ensure that we can go in and take a tour and showcase all of it. And it made me, I know I'm going to get a little bit emailing in my feelings. It made me like, just want to say like, America, I, it makes me proud to see American run businesses.

19:17And it makes me proud to see female run businesses. It makes me proud to see other strong female leads take and run their businesses and support other people along the way. I loved it. That's it's, it was good. It was great. Being at the end of the project, I think that the biggest challenge for us is and was finding the right voice. How do we tell a story in 60 seconds? And this morning when I had a conversation with my husband and I said, that's impossible. It's impossible to tell all of this story in 60 seconds. And he says, that's your job. He's like, you know, you're good when you can tell the story in 60 seconds.

19:55So the hardest part is probably going to be the most gratifying part when the edit is complete and we found the voice and we found the story and we did something that I once thought was maybe impossible. So the idea of this project, the idea of just trying to be a correspondent, the idea of creating the blog, the idea of interviewing a company, it all started by a conversation that I heard on their podcast. And the whole idea of the podcast was send it, send it, send your book, your, your poem, your video, your drawing, your artwork, your photography, your radiography, send it, just put it out into the world and not be so worried or concerned what people are going to say or how they're going to judge or ask why send it.

20:40And I think it's a pretty full circle moment for me. as I am documenting the process. I absolutely positively could have made the 60 second video and not shared a behind the scenes. Why? Because it opens me up to people asking questions. Why are you even doing this? What do you hope to accomplish? Isn't this distracting? Are you a coat chaser? Coattails, like when you hang on to somebody's coattails, I think I just made that word up, a coat chaser, chasing somebody's coattails, whatever, whatever. There's a lot of things that I think people could say. And yet I'm making the vlog because I want to document the failures.

21:15I want to document the attempts so that when people say, that girl tries hard. I want them to say, that girl tries hard. And both of them could be true. And I wanted to make this video to tell you to keep trying hard. Try so hard, they can't stop looking at you. So this is what we came up with. Ideas. Why do so many people have them, yet few turn their ideas into reality? And then even fewer turn the reality into a business. In my experience as a founder, the idea is just 1 % of the opportunity. Sometimes, like in the case of Mary Barnes, the idea begins simply as a job that ends up revealing an entire gap in the market.

22:01Turns out, a lucrative gap. It's 2010 and Mary works at Marc Jacobs as a fashion merchandiser. She also worked on charity initiatives and campaigns focused on selling Marc Jacobs shirts where the proceeds were donated to breast cancer research. These campaigns were year-over-year successes and she saw how people positively responded and how much good could be done from people buying shirts that gave back. Soon, other people asked Mary to help them create and sell merchandise as part of their charitable endeavors. So the gap in the market was distribution and logistics, but the demand was plenty.

22:34And Mary created the solution. Enter the shop forward. It's 2014 and she launched her first campaign for the Bobby Bones show and sold out of a thousand hats in 30 seconds. What began as a way for organizations and businesses and influencers to sell merchandise for charity, has now grown into their own product lines made even more popular when worn by celebrities. The business has grown beyond her wildest dreams, and she's most proud to have donated over$6 million to charity in the last few years alone. Her story goes to show that the best businesses aren't a single idea, but a series of ideas strung together in a relentless pursuit of success.

23:11So I want to know what's your million-dollar idea. My name is Jasmine Starr and I tell stories about ideas that became the opportunity for people to say this is how I made my first million. Also, also, uh, the blogging thing is new to me. So if you have insights, feedback, leave a comment. If you have questions, if you liked something in particular and you want me to go deeper, I would love that. So we read your comments. We appreciate them. And you could also just ping me here, YouTube, like, and subscribe. Is that what the cool kids say? Or here's an email address info at jazminstar.com. I'd love to hear your advice and have the team connect with you.