Flash Fire Business Q&A: My Personal Insights and Marketing Strategies

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0:39Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where I love to connect with you. And the team and I were chatting and I discovered that lately the podcast has felt a little unidirectional. Me talking to you. This podcast, we're flipping the script because I asked you for questions. We are getting into a flash buyer business Q &A. We are going to go to the moon and back. So think of this as a power punch taking you to college, taking you to get an MBA. No, I'm just kidding. It's not that deep. However, I love talking about business. And I know that when I'm standing in my place of power, sharing from experience or my perspective, it saves you time.

1:24It expedites your learning curve and it helps you get results that you want. So on that note, we're going to dive right in. And for those who asked questions, I had put out a question feature box on Instagram. Got some goodies. I'm going to be shouting those people out. So if you would like your future question answered, be sure to pay attention, subscribe to those notifications, and let's start engaging. Okay, this is from Coach Kemzi. To validate an offer, would you pre-sell the idea or beta test and create it with a few people? Do you recommend beta testing your course for free at a discount or full price?

1:59So this question is, I have an idea and I need proof that it actually works. I am a huge fan, huge fan of starting Scrappy. Now, Scrappy doesn't mean crappy. It just means how do I get initial data that would prove the time, the energy, and the money that I spend in this venture will actually have a positive ROI. So she is asking, would you pre-sell the idea or beta test and create it with a few people? Pre-selling the idea sounds nice, but the tricky part of pre-selling is that you don't actually know if people want the thing you're selling. And that's why I believe a beta test is so powerful.

2:50Now, there could be some times and opportunities where you are like, sure, certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that the thing you're going to offer is going to be exactly what your audience wants. In that case, pre-selling is a really great option. But for the vast majority of business owners, specifically when you're creating a new offer, it's going to be really key that you can co-develop the offer to ensure that you're guaranteed it being an irresistible offer. There have been plenty times in my career where I will beta test an idea before selling it at scale. So this could be for a digital product.

3:27It could also be for a service. So a beta test is getting a small group of people to stay committed at a discounted price to give you feedback. And so this gets into the second part of Coach Kermzee's question, which is, do you recommend beta testing your course for free or at a discount or full price? Okay. So I have always maintained that when people have skin at a game, they show up differently. It's the same ideology. It's like you can spend 20 bucks on a sweater from TJ Maxx, or you can spend$2 ,000 on a cashmere sweater from Saks Fifth Avenue. You're going to probably take better care of that$2 ,000 sweater because of how much you spent on it.

4:11There's like a different value that you're applying to it. And so when somebody signs up for a beta test, You can absolutely do it for free, but you're going to see that horrible feeling of people just stop caring because their money's not behind it. So traditionally, I will do a beta test at about a 50 % discount. So if I was going to launch a$497 course, I would offer it for$247. And I would say that they're going to be getting it at a 50 % discount because I really want and I need their feedback. This is a co-creation process. And so for me, I cannot over endorse a beta test. Now, the beta test could be small, it could be quick.

4:55The idea is simply to get feedback early on from people to get their ideas and insights based on how to make it better, how to make it juicier. And then it kind of creates like a moat around your offer that you feel so much more confident taking it to market. Okay, this is from Mommy Business Moves. But mommy, like Puerto Rican mommy, M-A-M-I, what are the email strategies you use to continuously build your email list? Number one, I am really using my email as a way to personally connect with people. I write all of my own weekly emails, and I'm using it as an opportunity to extend the business lessons I am learning or have learned.

5:40That newsletter is not for everybody. That newsletter is not going to be tapping into pop culture. It's not going to be into fads. It's not going to be things that are traditionally really shareable. This is for a very specific audience. So the reason why I am mixing business and personal is because I, number one, want people continuously opening the email. Number two, continuously finding value. And three, pre-qualifying who they might be forwarding that email to. And so what I want to do is create a personal relationship or a personal closeness around a shared identity and desire, which is business.

6:22And then I want to make it so good that somebody can't help but pass it forward to somebody. Now, nobody is passing or forwarding on an email unless they have self-identified. this is me or this was me or I want this to be me. And they would be sending it to somebody else who might be feeling it that same way. But I don't look at list building from the people who are currently on my list. That's a very big ask for a reader to forward it to somebody else. And then that person find a way to subscribe to my newsletter. There's just too many lily pads. So I'm always looking at outside ways to build the newsletter list.

7:04And so the main key way is making sure that I have the subscribe button for my newsletter on my website, on my blog. And what I'm also doing at that point in time is having a dedicated page. So jasminestar.com forward slash subscribe. Whenever I'm in DMs with somebody and they're like, how do I go deeper? I share a ton of free content on my weekly newsletter. Now, the goal for me with the newsletter is to have a conversation so that there's this continuous feedback loop so people can respond to the newsletter and they're going to be connected to our customer support team. And our customer support team is there to help people on the journey.

7:43It's like you have another question. Hey, we can answer. We can send free resources. That's going to be the goal for the newsletter is to be another way to connect with people. Social media is great, but we don't own social media. The algorithm can change. You could lose your profile. With your newsletter list, it is 100 % your voice. It is 100 % the contacts that are yours that you could reach out at any given point in time. Now, I'm using social media to point to free resources that somebody has to subscribe to or opt into. And so these are normally called opt-ins, freebies, list builders. And so we're creating resources for who we think would be a potential customer, client, anybody on their journey who would make an investment to an offer.

8:32And that's what I want every business owner to have and focus on. In fact, I was a mentor for Inc. Magazine and the UPS store. It's called the Small Business Challenge. And they brought in three mentors and each mentor got three mentees. So I was working with three incredible mentees. And one of my mentees is Tamisha. And she has a candle business company. And she said that she was pretty consistent sending a newsletter every month. But then she fell off. For like the last year, she hadn't sent a single newsletter. And I told her, I strongly feel like you're sitting on money. And I said, your newsletter list will print you money.

9:11But there's a condition. You have to cultivate that audience. That audience, now she was selling candles, but the same thing applies to anybody's business, is there is a plethora of options. I can go to TJ Maxx or Target or Amazon and buy candles. I can be at a farmer's market and buy a candle. Why would I go out of my way to find her small business that's not sold in any major retail, that's not sold on Amazon, that's not sold in farmer's market? Why would I go out of my way to buy her candle? Because I know about her story. I either am caring about the origin story. I'm caring about her. I'm caring about where a portion of her proceeds go.

9:54I am caring about the quality of her candle. I'm caring that it's organic. So all of these things. But the only way that I know how to care about them is if I'm told that information. And I told her, your newsletter list is worth something. You're sitting here really focused on your cash runway. and you have thousand people who you haven't spoken to in a month. I was like, girl, please. The next time we meet, so we were meeting once a week for an hour. And I said, the next time a week, the next time we meet, I want you to send a newsletter and just explain the updates, what you've been working on.

10:31I'm like, you have such a great reason to tell people that you're a part of this competition, that you could win your portion of$35 ,000. Like, what are we talking about right now? She said, okay, she'd do it. The next week when we met, she's like, Jasmine, I got six orders the day I sent the newsletter. And I'm like, of course you did. And she was like, and the orders were for multiple candles. I'm like, of course you did. She literally sent one email that she put together. She created a template, so it will take her less time in the future, but she created a template. She said it took her less than a half an hour and she literally got over$1 ,000 worth of orders.

11:08And I think to myself, how many of us are sitting here with an opportunity to build another pipeline into the business? So going back to Mommy Moves questions, that was a very long answer to get to. It's like, what are the email strategies you use? Consistency. I send a newsletter every single week. Does every single business owner need to send them every week? No. But determine your level of consistency and stick with it. Then your newsletter should offer some sort of value. It shouldn't be buy my thing. here's another thing to buy because people stop opening it. What you want to do is to create a sense of value, education, entertainment, or empowerment.

11:46The three E's. The same three E's that I use for social media content, if it is entertainment, if it is educational, if it is empowering, there's a higher likelihood that people will engage with it. And I use the same thing for the newsletter. I will occasionally use my newsletter to invite people to join a master class. I will occasionally make an offer in the newsletter. But by and large, over 85, 90 % of it is going to be lessons I've learned, things that I'm learning in business, how somebody might be able to use it and apply it to their business. And that builds trust. And trust leads to open rates.

12:22And open rates lead to a longer pathway of trust and conversions for a future offer. Okay. Shelly Spitoff asked, how do you know it's time to move to the next level? Shelly and or anybody else who asked me that question. If you're asking that question, it's time. You wouldn't be grappling with that question if you were okay where you were. It is that itch. It is that desire. It is that idea that you know you're made for more. So how do you know it's time? If you're asking the question, it's time. But I secretly think you're not just wanting to put your finger on a timeline and say, this was the time.

13:10It's what stops us from getting to the next level. That's the much bigger question. How many people have I spoken to that know they're ready for the next level, that long for the next level, but they don't know what to do next? and it's the lack of knowledge and confidence of knowing what to do next that stops people. It's not ability. It's not know-how. It's not education. It's what is the next step? And I might be the only person who feels this way, but none of us know the next step. None of us are mind readers. None of us are living in the future to say this is the next best step. So in light of not knowing the next best step, why not take a step?

14:00And at the time of this recording, in the last month and a half, I've tried three things, three things that didn't pan out the way that I wanted. And last night at dinner, I was talking to JD. And I said, it feels like you kind of feel shaken a little bit. Like how many ideas do I got to put forward that'll be like, oh, close, no cigar. Oh, that one didn't work. Oh, nope. And so I felt that the story I could tell myself was that I had felt shaken. But the much bigger, wiser, better part of me had said, you did small micro test. You made an offer to a small group of people to see what their buy-in would be like before you actually took it to the market.

14:46it. And by doing that test of a small group of people, you learned a lot and you realized you need a longer runway to make that offer. That's a win. Of course, not getting what I want when I want it doesn't feel like a win, but it's a win if I get what I want when the time is right after I do the work to get the result. So going back to Shelly's question, how do you know it's time If you're asking the question, it's time. How do you know the next best step? We don't. So you just take a step and you hope it's right. But if it's wrong, you simply take another step. French Buckets asked, if you suggest one thing that can be done today to stabilize the ups and downs of business, what would it be?

15:38Control the controllables and let go of everything else. I cannot control the outcome. I can control the effort. So I am responsible for the effort. I am not responsible for the outcome. Control your controllables. What can you control? Like, quite honestly, think about that right now. What can you control in your business? I can control if I'm posting consistently on social media. I can control if I send a weekly newsletter. I can control dropping two or three podcasts in a week. I can control taking the time out to create content. I can control carving time out to cast a vision for my future.

16:31I can control fostering and building the culture of this team. Here are things I cannot control. I cannot control if somebody buys an offer that I put out. I cannot control if somebody has an opinion about the content that I have worked on. I cannot control even worse when somebody doesn't have an opinion about the content that I have been working on. I cannot control what other people think, say about me. So I let that go. When we go back to stabilizing the ups and downs of business, first and foremost, accept it will always be up and down. That is the nature of business. So how do we stabilize it?

17:15Well, by accepting, it will never, ever, ever be a flat line. If you have a flat line business, you're not growing. And if you're not growing, you're dying. That's just it. So number one, we accept that business is always up and down. And then how do you go back to the core and stay the course? Control the controllables. I am responsible for the effort. I am not responsible for the outcome. And the more continuously I am focused on my effort of just doing the micro actions however I can every single day, even if it's just five or 10 minutes that I am doing everything I possibly can to centralize and as much as possible stabilize my business, even though I know deep down stabilization is never the aim.

18:05It's just to minimize how low those lows are and to capitalize on how high those highs are. Robert underscore does underscore marketing asked, what is the secret to great engagement that leads to conversions? Okay, I'm going to give a very honest and not so glamorous answer. My answer is that my business gets conversions by really, really basic engagement. So here's the thing. People will say, ah, social media, it's like so great. That's where you get sales. That's is yes. But any conversion by way of email, by way of a sales call, by way of a webinar, by way of social media, any conversion comes on the back of really simple actions.

19:02So I can't tell you how many times I'll do a consulting session or I'll be asked a question and people are like, I'm not getting conversions. And if I go through and I see the engagement rate, like somebody responding to their own comments, if I go back and look at an email sequence or funnel and sometimes people are responding to that and they don't get a response, and I'm like, right here, this is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. If you are not harvesting and tending that, But you're going to be having a very hard time for conversions. So if you want conversions on the back of social media, if you want leads on the back of social media, then you have to be responding to comments.

19:53You have to be responding to DMs. And if people are not engaging with your account, then you must go and give that engagement. You only get conversions after starting a conversation. Now, that sounds so simple. It's not easy. Because people, I get it. Business owners are strong in every possible direction. And they're like, how much time am I going to be spending on any social platform or responding to emails? And I would say, you do as much as you can, however you can. And when you go through and you start conversations, if you're not getting them, you are truly cultivating long-term leads. When people know that a business cares about them or is interested in them, they are so much more likely to be a converted customer.

20:48I'm not going to say the name of the company, but there was a SaaS company. It's a CRM. And they just hired a group of interns to go through and follow a very specific business-related hashtag. And those interns, all they did all day was like and leave comments from that business account. In less than six months, that business account had grown to over 20 ,000 followers of people who, if you went into subsequent Facebook groups or business-related Facebook groups or entrepreneur groups or entrepreneur Instagram accounts, you would see them tagging that business and be like, oh, they're so great.

21:29They're so personalized. Why? Because they just liked that account and they left comments and they were engaging? And the answer was yes. They were converting people on social media from cold leads, complete strangers on a hashtag, engaging, starting conversations, following up on the conversations. And not only did those people become customers, they became advocates because they started the conversation. So what's the secret to great engagement? Giving it if you ain't got it and or responding when you get it. That's it. Now that takes time. But hey, that's time well spent. Zach Weichel asked, with so many pieces of data that you can track, monthly sales, email opens rate, post likes, etc.

22:20It can feel so overwhelming and be very time consuming, gathering and analyzing all of the data. If I were to create a spreadsheet with the top numbers or pieces of data that I could pull up at a moment's notice, scan and make a decision about my business, whether it's about what social media content to create, what email subject line to use, whether to make a business purchase, etc. What data or numbers would you include on the spreadsheet so I don't feel overwhelmed to the point that I can't make a decision, yet informed enough to make a confident decision. Okay, so y 'all know I love data. I make moves, I make investments, and I make decisions that are largely data-driven.

23:02However, what Zach did, and I'm not sure this is the case, but one can assume, he says, if I can just pull up a spreadsheet and see the data, then I would know what decision to make. And I don't make decisions that way. What I do is I first create a focus. Then I collect data. Then I make a decision. So by the way that the question was framed, and I don't think that this was Zach's intention, but I'm going to answer it the way the question was asked, is if I'm looking at all this data, how do I make a decision? And I say, I don't look at all the data at one place around my business decisions, I just simply say, if I am focused on growing my newsletter, I'm only looking at newsletter data, open rates, click-through rates, responses, unsubscribes.

23:56That's it. I mean, we can go into way more data, but having those four key metrics, when I'm solely focused on the newsletter, I am then empowered to make a decision. Now, if I am solely focused on growing my social platforms, I first and foremost pick the social platform I want to focus on. Rory Vaden said it best, diluted focus gets diluted results. I look at all of these pieces, these growth marketing levers as individualized thing. I am not looking at all of the data because that becomes so overwhelming. So what I really do is I focus in on specific things, then have a segment of KPIs or metrics that I can measure, then make a decision.

24:49So at the time of this recording, in 2024, at the beginning of the year, I made the concerted decision to focus on the podcast. So when I am looking at the podcast, we decided to come up with a set of metrics of things that we're looking for. Why? I don't want to create a podcast for fun. I want to create a podcast for purpose. But if my ideology and my purpose isn't aligning with yours, then this is a waste of time. It's either I need to go and find people who are aligned with my purpose, or I need to carefully listen to what people are asking and what they want to know and create content for them.

25:32So the minute I set up my focus on the podcast, the team and I sat down and we started looking at total downloads per episode. Total downloads within the first 24 hours. Total downloads in the first seven days. completion rate, like how long on average are people listening? And we wanted to know what topics seem to be performing the best. So now when I'm making a podcast decision, I'm not looking at my newsletter spreadsheet. I'm not looking at my social media spreadsheet. I'm not looking at activation spreadsheet. I'm solely looking on that one thing. So as a general rule of thumb, more data allows you to make a more informed decision, but also contributes to overwhelm.

26:22So what I like to do is to keep anywhere from four to five key metrics, very high level, high level that we can all focus on. And as long as we are increasing or bettering those key metrics, then everything else should fall in place. So I hope that that helps. So let's go back and distill the answer one more time for Zach. I do not look at all of my data to make a business decision. I choose my focus on what I am looking at, have four or five key metrics. And based on those key metrics, that is how I'm making a decision for that singular focus. If I can continue to create singular focuses at different time within the business, so let's just say an initiative for a quarter is a podcast.

27:10And another initiative is to focus on the email subscriber list. And another focus would be to focus on social media as a solopreneur or somebody with a very, very small team. Having a quarterly focus is going to be great. But now my business has grown to such a space and place that I can now say, OK, I want you focusing on newsletter KPIs and metrics. I want you collecting the data. I want you giving suggestions on how we might improve and then I can go back and say, okay, thank you so much. Let's make these decisions. And then that person goes and deploys it. But far before I could ever get a team in place to do that with me, I had to do it solely on my own.

27:50So I hope that helps. Thank you so much. Okay. I want to get into one of the questions that was asked and I kind of liked it here. What are the common mistakes? Oh, this was asked by Manuela Moria Interiors. What are the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when it comes to marketing. Consistency. That's it. Consistency. It is consistency in every aspect of the business. It is consistency with the time that you are waking up. It is the consistency with supplements that you're taking. It is consistency with the time you're going to bed. It is consistency in the amount of water you're drinking.

28:33It is consistency in sending your newsletters when you say you're going to send them. It is consistency in posting when you say you're going to send them. It is consistency in creating. It is consistency in following the vision. It is consistency in growing personally so that your business grows. It is consistency. The biggest mistake is that when we do not get what we want when we want it, we slow down or worse, we stop. You will never get what you want without consistent actions at getting to where it is you want to go. It is the most unsexy, unglamorous, unfun thing to talk about. But every successful entrepreneur that has ever grown outsized of themselves, of their team, When they got outsized results, it's because they became very consistent at honing in and having a focus and then expanding once they understood where they were excelling and where they needed growth.

29:38That's it. That's it. Lorraine underscore Michaels asked, in business, what if the thing that brings you the most joy isn't making you money? I can answer this girl Welcome to the thing that is bringing me the most joy and not making money You're listening to this podcast I have been working heavily with my mentor and my team at calculating how much we have spent on the podcast so far and how much per year we spend on Creating the podcast and like I said in this show In 2024 my focus is the podcast and part of that focus is up-leveling everything we're doing, adding video components, the guests that we're bringing in.