How I Maximize My Experiences and Investments to Reach My Next Level as a CEO

0:00Ten years ago, I made the decision to build my personal brand that was elevated, yet approachable, and reflected who I was, not just what I did. I created my website with ShowIt because it's true drag-and-drop freedom, so you can easily build and update your site. Plus, their real human support team, game changer. Want to try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash showit for a 14-day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. The way I think is different, and the way that we all think is different. But what I think is the more we talk about how we look at things differently, the faster we're going to grow because we can see different vantage points.

0:34Welcome to the Jasmine Starr Show, where we talk about business mindset marketing. And today, we're going to be speaking specifically about how to optimize every experience for business growth. Now, if you happen to be watching the podcast on YouTube and you see that my face looks a little bit funny, I'm just going with it. You know, on Instagram, my algorithm serves me things I just don't need in my life. I love good skincare and I was constantly being fed, oh, the benefits of not just a facial because I love facials. I get a facial every six weeks. Like skincare is my jam. You know, before I go to bed, my husband will give me about a 45 minute heads up.

1:13He's like, hey, I'm going to be turning in for the night. And it's 45 minutes before because he knows my nightly skincare routine is not for the faint of heart. Like, guys, I am like massaging my face. I am doing like facial yoga. The balms that I have for my skin are next level. And so when I'm being served up these laser facials, I think to myself, where is this laser facial been all my life? So I tried this laser facial called Moxie. And let me tell you, bless it all. It was so painful. Like, oh my God, I was like, I think I'm going to quit. I'll just walk away right now. I didn't. I stuck it through because your girl can do hard things in life and business.

1:53All of that to say, if my face looks like, I don't know, I got, you know, really sunburned while skiing in the Elps. Let's just pretend that's the case. Or I mean, literally the goggles that they had on the laser. I have a goggle tan along the side of my face. I've really cranked up the lights here in my home studio because you want to know what? Nothing is going to get in the way of me recording this podcast today, just like I hope for you. You're not going to allow anything to get in your way. Here we are talking about business growth and we just spent the first four minutes talking about my skincare routine.

2:22Okay. Speaking of really inside and personal looks, I will tell you that in 2024, I dropped a podcast at the end of quarter one called Laying Bricks. And all I did was literally go through and explain everything I did the first quarter to build relationships, to build the business in the future. And the feedback we got was so great that I decided to do it again at the end of quarter two. And lo and behold, the responses were even stronger. They came back with, hey, thank you so much for doing the second time. We like being able to clock what's going on. Because there were things where I might have said in quarter one, you know, I met with this person.

3:00I'm not really sure why or what have you. And then in quarter two, I said, you guys, that person that I met in quarter one, I followed up with him and they opened the store for me unexpectedly. And one of the things when people were sending me DMs on LinkedIn or Instagram, and I'm responding and they say, thank you so much. I actually got a little bit nervous, but I asked the question I really wanted to know. Because to me, laying bricks episode, it just felt like I'm just regurgitating the history of my work life. Whereas other podcast episodes, I mean, the team and I, we spend a ton of time, hours preparing for our framework style episodes.

3:34And while we do get a lot of great feedback and, you know, people will share them on social media. Thank you so much for that. That is the way this podcast grows. We by far get the most feedback from a show that I'm literally like just cataloging the history of what I did. And so it's beguiling to me. It's hard for me to see what makes it so special. So I started asking people, thank you so much for the feedback. What specifically did you like about it? I am literally trying to understand because if I understand what people like, then I can go and create more episodes like that. So a couple of things that people had said, and what we're going to do first is we're going to link in the show notes back to quarter one and quarter two laying bricks.

4:10If you haven't checked those podcasts out, I think you're very much going to enjoy them. People were saying I had the opportunity to sink my teeth into what it means to run a business at that level. And so I'm literally writing down quotes. I learned what I could do differently in my approach. Also, the DMs that I'm getting are the most questions driven. People come back with very specific questions, which I thought was very empowering because it's allowing me to think about future podcast. And a lot of times what people said was, we want to understand why you think that way, which is a very cool question.

4:45And I'm working through on how to answer it. When people say, well, why do you think that way? It causes you to take a step back and I'm like, I don't know why I think that way. It's just the way I do. But that has never been an answer to suffice. In fact, if somebody says, you know, it's like that age old thing that your mom probably said, or maybe it was just my mom. What she said to me was like, I'm the mom. That's why. To which in my childhood mind, like that answer made no sense. Just because you're my mom, you get to make the rules. Like I needed a logical explanation as a child. And so I'm challenging you to challenge me.

5:12Why do I think that way? So as we go through this episode, what I wanted to do was use a few examples. of things I did in the past that will hopefully open my mind and yours to why I think a certain way. And then I want you to start applying it to your business if it resonates. Okay. I'm going to start off by saying I am not making this podcast because I think I'm somebody special or I do things special. Not at all. I'm going to reframe this because at first I didn't want to make this podcast because I was like, well, you know, it's not easy being a special snowflake. No, but the reframe for me was the way I think is different and the way that we all think is different.

5:50But what I think is the more we talk about how we look at things differently, the faster we're going to grow because we could see different vantage points. So as I created this episode, what I did was I journaled four events that had a positive impact in my life and what I did differently to maximize the investment. So four events that impacted my business and my life and what I did differently so that I would maximize that investment. Okay, so we're going to start off with the goal. The goal of this episode is that you start thinking differently about how you are going to maximize your business investments.

6:24Cool? Easy peasy. And it's going to follow a little bit of that same framework that we did for laying bricks. I'm literally just going to chronicle what I did in the past, and then we're going to start letting things rise to the top. Now, here's the thing. Now, before anybody thinks that this intention is just purely altruistic, it is. I want to help you. But what I have noticed is that I learn the most when I teach somebody else. And in fact, science proves that. If you want to learn more about what it is you do, teach somebody how to do it. And so in the process of me understanding why I think a certain way, when I'm able to teach it, and then you come back with feedback, challenges, questions, I can further define my overall objective and the pathology of why I do what I do.

7:05So the goal is to have you start thinking differently about maximizing your opportunities. Let's dive into event number one. Immediately, what came to the top was, I had journaled a mastermind experience that I had invested with a gentleman by the name of Lewis Howes. Now, currently, Lewis has one of the biggest and multiple podcasts around the world. He has a massive YouTube channel, massive podcast, and what he does now purely is the podcast. Now, when I joined his mastermind a few years ago, he had a few arms of his business. One of them was helping and empowering entrepreneurs, and so I joined his mastermind.

7:37Now, when I was there, Louis, I believe, to the best of my recollection, hosted three live events a year over 12 months. And the first event I went to, it was in Santa Monica and a gentleman by the name of Rory Vaden. I didn't know who Rory Vaden was. A gentleman by the name of Rory Vaden came in and for about an hour and a half broke it down. He actually, in addition to like breaking down concepts, he broke my framework of reality. Like he broke the way that I saw things. And I have to tell you again and again, a mastermind is best suited to break your frame of reality. A mastermind is not good at telling you what to do.

8:14You know, it's not the best at giving you a step-by-step didactic framework. Not at all. It's the best at breaking your framework. And then you have to go and figure out how to put it all together. So Rory came in and he broke down three main concepts that really blew my mind. He became a time multiplier. He actually has a viral TED talk around time multiplication. He started studying what made very productive people wildly productive. And so that was very interesting. And he was sharing insights in that. And so I started thinking to myself, where can I multiply my time? Literally in about those first 20 minutes, I started thinking to myself, oh, I can multiply my time here.

8:49I can get more done by doing this. Then he also broke down the 5x rule for hiring. And so at this time in my career, it's like 2017, 2018, and we're really starting to build out our team. and I felt myself very frustrated with the fact that I couldn't onboard and train people fast enough. And he said one thing that just really shifted the way that I saw things. He said, it's going to take somebody you hire five times the amount of time it takes you to do a current thing. So if it takes you an hour to write a newsletter, the person that you bring on, a creative director, a copywriter, well, it's going to likely take them five hours to write that newsletter.

9:27And then over time, what happens is the time begins to truncate. The more they become accustomed and the faster they learn those things, that time gets closer to what you were doing it at. But because you've been doing it for so long, it's just ahead of the curve that, of course, is taking you less time than the person you just hired. And so that framework helped me really be so much more gracious with myself and with the team that I'm onboarding. He also talked about a messaging framework. What is your message as a leader? What is your message as an entrepreneur. And he was so compelling. I mean, he went over all of these things in about a 90-minute session, and then we went into Q &A.

10:03And in the back of my mind, I lodged, I'm going to work with this guy. I don't know how. I don't know when time, budget will afford me that opportunity to, but I'm going to. And that was in 2017, 2018. And then I had the opportunity to fly to Nashville in 2023. And I met one-on-one with Rory Vaden. And it was for two days. We took the president of Social Curator, and I was working on messaging for rebranding Jasmine Starbrand. And Katie was working on re-messaging for branding for Social Curator. And I have to tell you that one of the things he said that has stuck with me is he said, you are most powerfully positioned to serve a version of who you once were.

10:48You are most powerfully positioned to serve a version of you who you once were. Also, in addition to another speaker that I was introduced to at Lewis Howes' Mastermind was a woman by the name of Erin Weed. But here's the crazy thing about her introduction was that she actually wasn't at the event. Lewis spoke so highly about how he had worked with her one-on-one to actually find a deeper purpose to his work. And Erin, I come to find out, was her big question is, what is the purpose of what it is you do? She says, when you clearly identify the purpose of what it is you do, you find different and powerful ways to continue pushing forward, to continue growing, to have less opportunities for burnout or overwhelm because it's anchored in purpose.

11:37And so what she had then walked Lewis through, and this is Lewis talking to us about this experience, is how his purpose is related directly to his brand. And I thought to myself, I don't know how and I don't know when, but I am going to work with this woman. So her reputation preceded her. And I ended up in 2018 or 2019, I booked a one-on-one session with her. I flew to Boulder and I worked with her on a deep dive. She calls it a dig. I worked with her and invested in a dig to figure out the deeper meaning of my purpose. By that point in time, I had already had three pretty significant career pivots, innovations, exploration, and I wanted to find the tie that binded them all together because once I understood that, it would empower me to continue to scale and change thereafter.

12:28And one of the things that she had said right when we had met was the following quote, when you're tired of the success you've achieved, what do you do next? I can't explain to you that in 2019, for all intents and purposes, I couldn't even dream of the level of success that JD and I had achieved. Now, to some people who are watching or listening to the podcast, you know, what we've done is just like, oh, that's guppy play. Like, go and play in that little pond. Oh, they're guppy out here where the sharks dwell. The ocean is a very different game. Fine. Fine. But considering that JD and I came from a lineage of polar bears, the fact that we could be a guppy in a pond is just mind blowing.

13:14Right. And so by this point in time, I almost was dealing with the weight or the embarrassment or the guilt of saying that the success I have achieved, I'm tired of. I want something different or I want something more. And so her big push is when you're tired of the success you've achieved, what do you do next? And she strongly believes that your purpose is the thing that drives you. Okay, so we're talking about maximizing your investments. Totally understand that. But I'm going to tell you now, I just explained event number one that really had a transformative effect around me learning how to maximize investment.

13:51So what's my biggest takeaway from event number one? Number one, look for ways to go deeper with highly specialized results. Now, if you notice in both of the situations, I went in Louis's mastermind 2017-2018. I didn't invest with Aaron until 2019. I didn't invest with Rory until 2022. But what I'm doing is I'm collecting little tiny pieces of building blocks in the future that I think I'm going to use when I'm ready. And number two, from the first event, my biggest takeaway on how to maximize results is you don't know what you need until you're in new rooms. I had no idea that I needed to become a time multiplier.

14:33I had no idea the time that people need to train five times that amount. I had no idea that I was going to have to do deep, heavy lifting of understanding what my purpose is. I never knew any of that, and that had such a transformative effect in my life and my business until I got into that room. Now, I have great news because Rory has been on this podcast. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. He's amazing. And I invited Erin to fly out and be on my podcast. She flew from Boulder to Newport Beach for the day, an incredible podcast. She's going to be showing and walking through a version of what I did in the dig, and she's going to be walking through that process.

15:06It was transformative for me. I can't wait for her to share that. That is coming soon. Prepare your hearts. Okay. Now let's talk about event number two of four. The first one was the Lewis Howes Mastermind. The second one, you guys are probably tired of hearing me talk about this. It's the Vive Leadership and Growth Accelerator. I know y 'all are tired of me talking about this, but this is a mastermind program that's offered with VaynerMedia. Gary Vaynerchuk had this idea where he wants to get five CEOs and five CMOs for a total of 10 people to go through and talk about leadership and growth acceleration for their businesses.

15:37I decided to do it this year. They call it their maiden voyage. The first time they ever do this, basically, maiden voyage is AKA you're the guinea pig. I love it. I did a full recap of the very start of the program. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. People gave a lot of great feedback because we shared the tea on what it was like to hang out with Gary and hang out with his team and the things that I learned. Again, building blocks for the future. Okay, so I want to highlight something different that I didn't talk about this podcast because on this podcast, we're talking about how to maximize that return on investment, right?

16:06How do we get a different result from maximizing our results? So I look at the Vive event in New York City different because I went in specifically looking for ways to improve my own mastermind. So this current offer, it's very much on the high end. It is$50 ,000 for four months. And so when you look at the spectrum of growth accelerators and programs, it's definitely on the higher end. And I thought to myself, well, if they're studying the standard, what pieces can I take from this experience and apply it to my future mastermind? So here are the top three things that I am taking away. Touch points with team members for detailed feedback.

16:41So in my last mastermind, the story I was telling myself was that I needed to be like a beacon. I needed to be air traffic control for all feedback. And in this growth accelerator, that's nothing at all the case. The Vayner team is in there and they're answering questions with such specificity and it's so powerful that I don't feel like it's lacking. I feel like it's even better. So the thing that I'm applying to my mastermind is my team is going to be in there and they're going to be able to give far better answers around specific topics. There's specific topics that are my domain that I'll absolutely be answering, but I'm not going to say, well, hold on, let me go and ask this person and have them give me feedback and then I'll go back in.

17:15No. Hey, team member, hop in, give them what they need, tell them what they want. Number two is I want to up-level the experience by getting sponsors for the event. So the first point of what I'm going to do to implement the things that I have learned to maximize this experience was number one, to touch points with team members so that I'm not air traffic control. Number two, up-leveling the experience with sponsors of the event. Y 'all, we ate great food. We drank great wine. We had great facilitations. And it was because sponsors came in to facilitate meals and just up-level the whole experience.

17:47And I never thought to myself that I would be able to find a sponsor to sponsor a small group of seven-figure entrepreneurs. But boy, was I wrong. I got some good stuff coming. Okay, Number three, mindset. Mindset. In my last mastermind, it was very focused on marketing. It was very focused on a very specific way to market your business and those strategies. And while my next mastermind will absolutely be benchmarked with go-to-market strategies and facilitation and how do we innovate, how do we stay ahead of the curve, yes, we'll talk about all of that. And we'll also talk about building a brand.

18:18And we're also going to be talking about systems and scaling. Yes, yes, and yes. But what I don't think I really allowed myself to step into was the mindset component. at Vive, it was for all of programming, mindset took up the most amount of it. Here we are talking about a leadership and growth accelerator, like growth as in how are we going to grow your business in this four months together? And the most amount of programming at their in-person event was mindset. Now we meet every single week and the programming has a lot been more around AI and marketing and brand building, yes, but the in-person events, mindset.

18:52And I thought that's 100 % what I'm gonna be moving for in my in-person events. Now, I will say that the biggest feedback, I'm a big fan of feedback. And the culture that I created with my last mastermind was, hey, deal it to me straight. Like, we don't know how to make this program better if you're not telling us exactly how you feel. So the biggest feedback that we got from the last mastermind, because after the live events, after the mastermind had concluded, I asked for follow-up. And number one, at our live events, people wanted more time to chill and talk with each other. And, you know, I was like, okay, you know, our lunch break was 90 minutes and we had a cocktail hour and we had dinner.

19:25But what they wanted even more beyond that was more time for them just to talk. And I was so worried about like, well, they got to get the most out of it. But what they actually wanted was more time to talk with each other, brainstorm. And then the second thing is that they told us most specifically that the in-person events were the most valuable. Now, my last mastermind, I offered it for six months and we had one in-person event. My next mastermind, we're having two in-person events because they said that was the most valuable. Now, here's the crazy part. I'm a firm believer that in order to facilitate or make an offer, it's really good if you experience yourself.

19:59So here I am in the Vive Growth Accelerator. And when Andrea and James reached out to me, they said, OK, we're just doing a check-in. What would you like more of? Guess what I said? I would like more time to brainstorm and talk with our fellow members of the Accelerator. And number two, I would love if we had more time in person. The very thing that I was told as a host was the very thing I was saying as an attendee. So it just serves as double confirmation to really lean in to what I want as an experience and then what I want to provide as an experience. Speaking of masterminds, I'm opening early applications for people on the waitlist.

20:40If you want to join that waitlist so that you are the first to know and you are very interested in snagging a seat, you can go to jasminestar.com forward slash waitlist. Here we are talking about this. Now, my biggest takeaway from event number two was to look for ways to up-level your business offers by expanding what's possible. I never considered having sponsors for a very small intimate event. I never considered bringing in facilitators that are specifically specialized in mindset. I never thought about bringing in like specialists on our team who are gangbots, like they're ninjas in their specific field to come in and start facilitating those conversations within the group.

21:21The second biggest takeaway from event number two was to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and experience things that you're providing. Not to put yourself in the shoes of your customer for your offer. You can't see the forest for the trees when you're in your own offer. But when you go out of it and say, I offer something similar, oh, this is how I can make it better. So the biggest takeaway from event number one was to look for ways to go deeper with highly specialized resources and to get specialized results. You don't know what you need until you're in new rooms. The second event really taught me to up-level my business offers by expanding what's possible and to put myself in the shoes of the customer by way of a different event.

22:04Let's get into event number three. Remember, our podcast focus is doing things differently to maximize results. So I went in to Lewis's mastermind and I ended up doing things differently by pegging who I wanted to work with in the future. I've gone into the Vive Accelerator looking for things differently because I want to scout the land on how I may be able to up level. How can I offer more things in a better way in my business to grow and scale? Now, event number three was James Wedmore's mastermind. Now, I want to say again, I don't think I'm special. I don't think I am unique. I do understand that at least in this group, at this time, in this one moment, I did things differently.

22:48And I want to break down what happened. So during the mastermind, I noticed a similar theme with questions from a group of people. So his mastermind at the time, I believe it had like 25 people in it. And I started pegging certain people who were asking similar-ish questions to me. Not my exact question, but a similar question that maybe tapped around a similar pressure point. And so then what I did is of the people who were asking similar questions, I just made a list in my notebook. And during the live events, I would go and I would have one-on-one conversations with people who were asking similar questions around similar pressure points as I was.

23:25And then I collected their answers, right? I was asking them more about their question. I collected their answers and then I synthesized what they and myself, what we were kind of sort of asking. Was there a common theme or was there a pattern what we were asking? And then I said, would you be willing to meet in person so we can brainstorm? Number one, one-on-one conversations. Number two, I asked questions and created follow-ups to be like, what is the common theme? And then number three, would you be willing to work in person? And then I said, if I can get five of us around the same similar topic, we would be able to get an answer in a scaled way.

24:05So who did I want to brainstorm with? Yes, I wanted to brainstorm with the four other people who kind of had the same pressure point I did. But I wanted it to be facilitated by who? I had nothing to lose. I was going to ask James. So I pitched James a meeting of five of us around a similar pressure point that we had in all of our businesses. Now, I want to be very clear. In a mastermind, a mastermind is hardly ever one-on-one. Now, you might have like a one-on-one conversation here and there, right? With Gary as part of Vive, you get one 15-minute one-on-one. And with James, it was never denoted one-on-one.