How to Build Your Self Trust to Make Better Business Decisions

0:0010 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. Wanna try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash show it for a 14 day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. Welcome back to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we talk about business mindset and today, self-trust. Now prepare your hearts because I truly believe that self-trust is the key to making confident decisions and developing the ability to get back up again and again, which are two things that we have to do as business owners and leaders.

0:43But before I do that, I wanna read a few words for an amazing friend who listens to the show. Raina Schultz from Sprinkle Me Sugar left a five-star review on the show that said, the perfect medley of business advice, coaching, and it feels a lot like going to church and working out with your favorite Peloton instructor. Yes! I have listened to three years' worth of this podcast, and every time I finish an episode, I will be listening again because they're also packed with value. Raina, thank you for listening and leaving a review. I've always wanted to be a pretend Robin Arzon or Emma Lovewell or Peloton.

1:14Okay, thank you. Let's get back to self-trust. Now, I wouldn't say that I'm a natural self-truster. In fact, I have never trusted myself because I always believed I needed to have proof that I could be trusted. I needed diplomas. I needed letters after my name. I needed certifications. Then I would be able to trust myself. but I'm going to cut it too straight. Trusting yourself only comes from within. It can and it should be developed. Now, I wish I knew how to develop my self-trust when I started my business or let's just be real, even as recently as five years ago. So I started trusting myself with small things by listening to intuition.

1:53But I'm going to go back and I'm going to focus on small things. If I got like an inclination, like there was one time I remember walking into the garage and I'm like, hey, you should grab your house keys. Now, I drive into my garage and I have an automated lock in my garage that lets me in my house. I don't need my house key. But for some reason, I was like, your intuition is telling you to get the house keys when you don't normally need them. What did I do? I listened to it and I grabbed the house keys. Randomly that day, JD's car had some car issues. I went to go pick him up and he took an Uber and needed what?

2:22The house keys to get back in. Oh, I ran into somebody at a conference and then I set a reminder for like three weeks later to follow up with that person. Why? I was just listening. I was just learning to trust. I had a little voice that just said, you're going to forget to follow up. So make sure you set a reminder. So I set a reminder on my calendar, a Google reminder. And I was just like, follow up with this person. And so I followed with that person. And then he hit me back and was like, I cannot believe you remember this. I need to introduce you to this one person who I just had a conversation with.

2:48That opened up, you guys, a massive door for me. What did I do? I was listening to the small inclination, small ways of learning how to trust myself. I'll never forget. I was driving and I was leaving the house and something told me, because in our garage, we have a lot of storage units and it reminded me like to get a blanket. And I was like, why do you need to get a blanket? And I just said, trust yourself with a small thing. I grabbed myself a blanket and then unbeknownst to me, JD texted me, said, hey, Luna and I are at the park. Come and hang out with us. Let's have a picnic. I had a blanket in the back of my car and we just got Uber Eats and we sat on a blanket.

3:19I wouldn't normally have a blanket. So what was I learning to do? I was trusting myself with the small things. Now, the minute I started trusting myself, these really insignificant things that I realized, oh, wow, it made a difference. I started trusting my intuition with big things. Big things like I was hiring a business coach before I felt ready for a business coach. And then what happened in the process of it? I expanded and I grew and I was so ready for when I was ready for my business coach, we just hit the ground running. Now, I was listening to intuition for big things like hiring team members before I was ready.

3:53I was listening to my intuition. Like what I'm currently doing now is I'm listening to intuition for recruiting and courting future team members, because that's what my intuition, that's like on my gut. Like that's like, I've been in the business game long enough for me to know, hey, something's telling you something. So if you want to build your self-trust muscle, then this show is for you. So in this episode, we're going to be going over the validation trap, what self-trust consists of, and then how to get out of it, and building self-trust. Self-trust is so imperative to business. I need you to understand that as a leader, as you're building, it is not easy to trust yourself, but it is so important, and it is a muscle that you build.

4:34So let's get into it, and we're going to start with the validation trap. Now, there are many, many ways that entrepreneurs seek validation. all social media likes, awards, customer reviews, article mentions, video views, like you guys, like the list goes on and on. And there's no denying, oh man, it feels really good to get positive reinforcement, especially when, you know, you're your own business owner. So you don't have a boss that gives you praises and raises. And the truth is that as humans, we're hardwired to love recognition. And a lot of the times that recognition is a sign that you're on the right track.

5:09And that recognition, well, it shows us what is working and what isn't working. But this is where it can become a problem. External validation and motivation are out of your control. I'm going to say that again. Validation and motivation are out of your control. Now, but there are things that we can control to build self-trust. We must remember that momentum and direction come from within us, not from fluctuating opinions of others or like metrics of others. Okay, so if we know that there are things outside of our control, like validation, why would I ever seek it? I can't control it. Now, if I know that there are things that are coming from me, like momentum and direction, I need to focus on that.

5:50So what do we do? How do we get out of needing validation? How do we step out of something we can't control? We step into self-trust. We step into what we can control. But what exactly is self-trust? Self-trust is the unshakable belief in your own abilities, decisions, and your own instincts. It's having the confidence in your judgment and staying true to your vision, even in the face of external doubts or uncertainties. And in business, I believe self-trust is necessary for making big decisions, for making it like, oh, I'm gonna make a calculated risk. I believe that self-trust helps you stay resilient through challenges.

6:30Now, a good example of unshakable self-trust, now I'm gonna go in here in a second and you're gonna be like, girl, how are you working all of this together? Trust me on this one. I'm gonna go back to 2020. And everyone's like, no, we don't wanna go back to 2020. Me either. And neither does Simone Biles. Simone Biles was at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Now, if you don't know who Simone Biles is, she's an incredible gymnast and she has an incredible story and she pretty much defies the law of gravity. Now, I should probably take a little bit of a side note here. I live for the Summer Olympics. Like I am the kind of person, oh, gymnastics?

7:02You know, what is this sport where it's kind of like gymnastics, but instead they use like fluttering, twirling wands of fabric and they have the ball. I mean, you guys, I even watch things like archery. I am an Olympian in my soul. Like if there was a gold medal to watch the Olympics, I would be the Michael Phelps of watching the Olympics. Here's the deal. I like take deep pride in our country. Like I watched like the medal count. I was like, America, we're at it again. The most goals. This is what we do. Okay. Anyway, I just had to give you a side note why I was so fixated and why I really focused on this story because this story is a little bit different than a traditional Olympian story and it focuses on self-trust and I'm going to loop it all to business.

7:43So stick with me. At the 2020 Olympics, like you can imagine, Simone Biles was carrying the weight of immense expectations. She was a leader on the gymnastics team, but she began to experience what she calls the twisties. Now the twisties are like a disorienting like sensation that affects spatial awareness and it affects spatial awareness when she's midair. Now, I'm not an Olympic gymnast, obviously, but I'm pretty positive that gymnastics requires a high level of confidence and control when you're in the air. So having the twisties during competition, like that could end not badly, but terribly.

8:19It could end disastrously. Now, Simone made a very courageous decision that prioritized her mental health and her well-being. She did something really unexpected. She withdrew from the individual all-around competition. Everybody was shocked and people were so disappointed. I mean, let's be real. She was probably disappointed too, but she demonstrated incredible self-trust by doing this because despite the pressure to compete and she, you guys, like a Twitter ate her alive. Social media ate her alive. She's like, she's weak. She's an attention grabber. What is she doing this for? It's the Olympics.

8:55A true athlete pushes through. I was watching this all of go down and the immense amount of criticism that she faced. But what did she do? She listened to her mind and her body. She didn't listen to the fans. She didn't listen to the coaches. She didn't listen to social media. She didn't listen to her teammates. That's hard, you guys. That's so hard. She listened to herself and she trusted herself. She showed the world that true strength lies in courage to make difficult decisions and stand up for what you need. So what many at the time might have seen, like, oh, that's a sign of weakness, was actually a very powerful display of self-awareness and self-trust.

9:29Now, I think that this is a story and an example of how self-trust can empower you to make difficult choices that prioritize you, not the opinion of others. Now, I was gonna bring this back into business. So this is where it intersects with business. There have been so many times when I needed to trust myself when it came to make huge decisions in my business. And there was a lot of opinions. Opinions from family members, opinions from my business partner, opinions from my team members, opinions from people on social media, opinions from people in other peer-led groups, and they all had opinions.

10:02And I had to say, I'm going to listen to myself right now. Now, I want to share two personal examples of trusting myself, both focusing on what should have been massive, very high figure, six-figure months for us. Now, the first was a decision in 2022 to cancel a launch just a few days into the promotion. And we pulled a tech feature that took us about 10 months to produce. Okay. So a week before we started the launch, I journaled my thoughts. I just came across this journal too. I journaled my thoughts about the status of the launch. And I was like, man, I started admitting that I wish we could have tested it at scale before releasing the feature to the public during a promotion.

10:41Okay. I did not listen to my gut. And instead I told myself a false story that, oh man, we have to move fast and iterate on things. And this is the way that we grow fast and this is how we get results faster and faster, faster. Now, I made a decision on hope, not on trust. Now, if I'm being honest, I could sit here and beat myself up and I can, you know, not admit that it was a mistake. But once the early data showed that the feature, it just lacked clarity and it clearly lacked adoption, I ended the launch immediately. I admitted my mistake to the team and I said, y 'all, like, you gotta work with me.

11:17We gotta to quickly pivot the promotion to salvage what we can in a short amount of time. So now let's flash forward to 2023 when I launched my very first mastermind and I worked with 15 incredible entrepreneurs. It was a six-month program, but when we ended in September 2023, I decided I'm not going to renew the program. Even though members wanted to renew and even though we had a wait list of people that were interested in it, I said, I'm not going to do that. At the time, it didn't make sense. Like, oh, wait, you're not going to pursue like this massively powerful revenue stream and you got people resulting you now, you're not going to do that.

11:52But I felt like I needed to create a program that would ultimately help people in the mastermind get even bigger results. So we postponed the launch of the second mastermind. And then in March, 2024, we debuted an advanced course called Your Biggest Launch Ever, a complete step-by-step education guide about launching your offer. And now when I open the mastermind again, I will have created every resource for mastermind members to effectively launch. What does this mean? Well, now we can focus all of their efforts in scaling their branding and their marketing. As a side note, if you want to join the mastermind waitlist, we are focusing on high six and seven figure business owners.

12:35You can find the waitlist for the mastermind at jasminestar.com forward slash mastermind. And I'm going to link it in the show notes. But the purpose of these stories was to juxtapose. I'm going to pause. 2022, I did not listen to my gut when my gut was talking to me. That is a shame. But you want to know what have been more of a shame? Not listening to my gut in 2023. So I'm not going to bemoan or belabor the fact that I made a bad call in 2022. I tried my best. It was a bad call. I own it. I learned so that in 2023, you listen to your gut again. And that self-trust is saying, I know it doesn't make sense, but I need to do this.

13:13And I built that by having these anchors of small successes stacking on each other based on self-trust. So I'm learning to trust myself. I'm learning to admit when I'm wrong and trust that my team is empowered to do the same thing. I'm learning to trust the decisions I make when a much bigger purpose is in mind. So how? How do you build and develop your self-trust? We're going to get right into a quick framework in just a minute. but I first want to share something that I'm calling the self-trust triangle. So before we get into the framework, I'm calling it a triangle because the self-trust has three components, the inner foundation, decision-making, and then resilience.

13:54So let's talk about it. The first side of the triangle is your inner foundation. And this consists of your values, your vision, and your mission. Like when you think about this, it's who you want to become. What do you want to be known for. And this sets you up to make confident decisions. So why is this important? When you feel grounded in who you are and what you stand for, you can trust yourself to make choices aligned with your values and your vision. Okay, so let's move into an example. So picture a business owner who's thinking about leaving their stable job to pursue their business full time.

14:25If they trust themselves and have a strong inner foundation, they'll assess the situation based on their values, their skills, the vision they have for their life. And they will very much likely weigh the potential risks and rewards, financial risks, emotional risk, intellectual risk, knowing that their decision aligns with their authentic self and who they want to become. Now, on the other hand, if that business owner lacks self-trust and they have a shaky inner foundation, you want to know what's going to happen? Oh, you know what's going to happen. They're going to feel overwhelmed. They have self-doubt and uncertainty.

14:55They go back and forth and they're going to second guess their abilities. And then they fear, oh, I'm going to make the wrong choice. So what does that lead to? Not making a choice, indecision, avoidance. without this confidence in themselves, they'll most likely cling to what's safe and what's familiar in their current job, even if it means sacrificing their dreams and not living to their fullest potential. So what can you do to build your inner foundation? Huh, take some time, write, revisit, rewrite your vision, your mission. I want you to get so clear on where you're going and what you stand for.

15:30And I literally say this eating my own dog food in May of 2024, not that long ago, at a moment's notice, I checked into a place called Sensei. It is a mind-body holistic center of figuring out like the core. It's about healing. It's about feeling safe. It's about having the ability to create space for what you want to create. I wrote, who am I for? I wrote, what am I about? I literally wrote, why am I called to do this work? It's hard knowing I am not for everybody, but I have accepted this fact that I am not for everybody. And it's a part of this fact that it's now part of my foundation. It's who I am.

16:14Now, let's get into the second component of the self-trust triangle, which is right here. This right here is decision-making. This is where you put your inner clarity and confidence into action. And making good decisions requires, I know, everyone's like, don't tell me this. No, no, no. Good decision requires a mix of gut feeling, thoughtful analysis, and courage. When you trust yourself, decisions become easier. You lean into your intuition and experience knowing you've got what it takes to handle whatever comes your way. And even when things don't match what you hoped would happen, you can categorize it as an experience.

16:52I had an experience that wasn't what I expected. I didn't have a loss. But when doubt creeps in and you don't yet have that self-trust decision-making, it just gets harder. And then what do you do again? Here we go again. We second-guess yourself. You worry about making mistakes. You seek external validation. You might even avoid making the choice altogether. For example, let's say that you're considering expanding your business into a new market. When you trust yourself, okay, you say, I'm going to objectively weigh the pros and cons. I'm going to listen to my instincts. I'm going to take decisive action.

17:23You're confident in your ability to adapt and succeed, even in unfamiliar territory. However, if doubt clouds your judgment, you might hesitate. You might not even like, I'm not going to take any risk at all. You might agonize over possible outcomes instead of what's possible. And then what happens here? Well, the result is you miss out on a huge opportunity to grow your business and your revenue. So what can you do to make better decisions? Well, after you've worked on your foundations, start making small decisions based on your values, your goals, and your vision. This is a great way to begin building confidence.

18:01When you stack enough proof with making small decisions based on experience and intuition, you're confident to test making a bigger decision using the same skills. The way you're making decisions based on where you want to go, not out of fear. Now it's time for Real Talk. I recently consulted with a client who build a seven-figure business, and he took a lot of pride in having a really small team. But at the same time, he was frustrated because his team kept on telling him like, man, we're burnt out. And then they started slowly missing deadlines. Now, deep down, he knew he needed to hire more people, but he kind of like, he went back and forth.

18:39He vacillated. He wasn't never really fully committing to hiring and the hiring process and recruiting. And I told him, dude, you need to make a clear decision to hire. Say yes or no, Make a clear decision and then make a clear decision what roles you need to hire for. Then you need to make a clear decision, the order of importance for the roles that you're hiring. But he just couldn't commit to it. And then unfortunately, two key team members from his team ended up leaving to another company. Now, if he had just trusted his experience and he trusted his intuition, his intuition was like, oh, I need to prioritize hiring.

19:11If he just trusted that, I think he could have avoided learning this lesson. So right now, can you think of a decision that you've been avoiding? In this moment, can you simply make the decision? It doesn't have to be a decision you like or dislike. It's just, I just need to make a decision. And then can you draw a line in the sand and commit to yourself and to your team? This is the decision I made. It is now time to stack that proof. So now we're gonna talk about the third side of the triangle. Remember, we have these two sides. And that third side, the bottom, that's resilience. This is the foundation of the self-trust triangle.

19:45It supports everything else. And I believe it's a non-negotiable. Resilience is simply your ability to get back up again and again. And you develop resilience by constantly keeping promises to yourself and showing up for yourself, especially, especially when things get hard. I want you to think about it this way. Every time you face a setback or a challenge in your business, getting back up, resilience is what gives you the strength to keep going. It literally feeds you into the next thing. And resilience is not something you're born with. You can develop it over time. It's like a muscle that you're constantly working out.

20:21And each time you use it, it gets stronger. So for example, let's say you launch a new product and then it doesn't go as planned. Instead of giving up and saying, oh, well, it just wasn't meant to be. It's not for me. Why not take a step back? Analyze what went wrong and then use that knowledge to make improvements. You're now on the result of that. It's not going how you expected. You're now in a better position to try again. You can make the product or the offer even better. This is what pushes you to learn from experience and try again. And every time you overcome that hurdle or limitation, you're adding another piece of evidence that you can trust yourself to do what you say you're going to do.

21:00And you can make good decisions. Back in March, I hosted a live course experience. It was called Your Biggest Launch Ever. And it was an eight-week program. And I taught the content. And hundreds of people were launching their products, their services, and their offer. and some people had mind-blowing results. Others missed their goals and others had things that went awry. They were just things that were out of their control, like an ads account getting suspended or having a new email service provider not send her email funnel. And guess what? My response was always the same. It was the same for when you had a killer launch.

21:35It was the same when your launch killed you and it was the same when dang, nothing worked. It was the same. My response was, this is great. And now we analyze what worked, what needs change, how do we get better? The results was never the focus. It's what we're learning to optimize for in the future. Always good, bad sideways, always we're optimizing in the future. And I want to take a minute to like have a little side note. Resilience isn't just about bouncing back from failure. It's also about showing up for yourself every day when you don't feel like it. It's about sticking to your goals. It's about taking care of yourself.

22:16It's about staying true to your vision, no matter what. And so when we talk about wrapping up this three-part triangle, I want you to remember that resilience is gonna be the key to build your confidence. The only way you get confident is by stacking proof, but the way that you stack proof is showing up again and again and again. That is what empowers you to keep going. even when things are unbearably hard. Okay, so now that we know what the self-triangle consists of, I wanna dive into a three-part framework of developing self-trust. Now that you have the, here we go. I wanna, if I see you on the street, I want you to hold up a little triangle because now we're gonna get into self-trust.

22:53The first step is to get really clear on what you want and how you plan to achieve it. That's it. What do you want? How are you gonna do it? Now, doing this will help you find new ways to measure your success that are internal, only coming from you. So instead of comparing your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 10, you're going to be tracking your progress against your own goals and focus on what you can control internally. The next step to the self-trust framework is to become your own dang cheerleader. That's it. Bring out some pom-poms, shout yourself up, become your own hype person. We have the tendency to downplay our own wins.

23:28Maybe something seems small to us now, like, oh, compared to the person on the internet who's buying a new$18 million home or another milestone and there goes another Ferrari. Okay, but in reality, ourselves, three years ago, could we compare ourselves to who we are today to one year ago, to six months ago? Like there was a version of you not too long ago that would have killed to have the wins that you are having right now in this moment. Let us not forget that. So take the time to acknowledge and celebrate them. Did you finally launch that new product? Did you hit a subscriber goal? Did you overcome a difficult technical challenge?