How to Get Ahead of 99% of Business Owners

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 show it for a 14-day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. So he stood on a stage in front of everybody, booked in all of us and said, this is how you get ahead of 99 % of business owners. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we are going to be talking about how to get in front of, ahead of, 99 % of business owners.

0:48How's that for a hook? I've been trying to work on my YouTube hooks. Like, how are we doing? You know, people are like, you got a long way to grow, girl. That's right. But you want to know what? I'm better today than I was yesterday. On that note, let's go back to this thing that I heard. Now, earlier in my career, I was making a transition away from doing branding and marketing consulting for specifically photography related businesses. Started my career as a photographer. Then I started creating content for other businesses that were related to the photography industry. And then once I decided, hey, I'm going to go back and I'm just going to focus on my business.

1:22These businesses said, can you come in and teach our teams what you had been doing? So then I repeated back what I thought I heard, are you saying you want me to tell your team what to do? And then I come back online for a meeting just to check in to see if they're doing what we said we're going to do. To which they replied, yeah. And I was like, I'll take that job. Let's take that job. And so that had been the form of three revenue streams in my business at the time. Taking photography clients. I had an online store for photography educational resources for photographers. and that I was consulting photography-related businesses on how they might be able to create their marketing and branding to attract photographers.

2:04I started expanding who I was speaking to, specifically to business owners and small business owners, people outside of the creative space. Now, I was approached by an event to go and speak at their event. Now, this is me just getting outside of my industry. This would not happen today, but because I didn't have a lot of experience in what events look like for digital marketing, I just assumed they would look a lot like the events that we had in the photography world. Boy, was I wrong. I was asked to speak at an event and they wanted me to go in and talk about social media marketing. What I didn't know was that this event would be very much structured to be like that quintessential.

2:45It has bad blood. A lot of what people would say, snake oil salesmen in the digital world, like buy now and you'll get everything you want. I had no idea that this world existed. So my husband and I, we go to the event. I'm there with the videographer, and they asked me to get to the event an hour early just to ensure that I was miked and everything was set to go. So I walk into this hotel ballroom, and there's no windows. It is freezing cold. They have, you know, those like two-foot black stages. It's too high. And the length of it is probably 12 feet, and the width of it is probably six feet.

3:18So it's like just a tiny little stand. Like I could essentially build this black stage with tools and resources from Home Depot. Yes, that was the stage for this event. They had a bunch of chairs that were there and the event was attracting a lot of business hopefuls. Like, we're going to teach you how to build a business. And so by and large, the audience, they're dressed casually. It was a Saturday. Like, this is like the jeans and t-shirt kind of folks. And everybody who was speaking at the event or hosting the event, they were dressed in three pieces. I'm talking about they even had the handkerchief in the pocket now i grew up where my dad would buy like three suits which includes a tie and a shirt and a handkerchief like we would go to east la and then there in like the fashion district you would be able to like bundle these suits and so he would get like three suits for like 99 but the handkerchiefs in the pocket it came stuck in the pocket like my dad would say oh my god this looks so tacky and he would cut it out well at this event These brothers were wearing three-piece suits with a real hanky in the pocket.

4:19It was such a mismatch, right? Because it's not like we were at this hotel, like the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons. We were at like a right-off-the-freeway hotel in a ballroom where people were dressed casually. They had like a pop-up table in the front for registration with the typical lanyards. And they were on the stage. And I'll never forget. So I get there about an hour early and they have programming, like two speakers before me, each doing 30 minutes. And whenever they would announce the speaker, there would be like the person on AV and then they would, you know, like play the most quintessential conference song like, you know, Jump Around by House of Pain or Eight Mile by Eminem.

5:00And so the speakers would be walking down the aisle. Now, the room is long. And so you're walking down the middle of the aisle, like almost like it's like Price is Right or like a soul train. And so, you know, the jeans and t-shirt folks are sitting at the ends and then the guest speakers are going up and like they're pumping like, well, like they're doing like that. Well, I'll open the club type thing in their shiny shoes and like big heads. And then they jump up on that two foot stage and then they give the speech. And at the end of each 30 minute session, they would say, oh, well, there's a group of us at the back of the room where you'll find us with clipboards.

5:41have your credit card ready. We're going to, and I was like looking around and I'm like, what is going on? What did I just agree to speak at? Now, mind you, I did not get paid to speak at this event. At that time in my career, I'm moving away from events in an industry where I had established my name and brand into a space and industry where nobody knew who I was. So what do you got to do? You got to start at the bottom. So I agreed to speak at this event. I wasn't getting paid and all of a sudden I see so much sales pressure. Let me tell you, anytime you're in a very cold room, they intentionally keep it cold so that you don't fall asleep and you're actually not thinking all that smartly.

6:20And they'll say, go to the back of the room, drop your credit cards. And so there's like a crew of people in the back where they have clipboards, they run your credit cards because they want to sell you higher and higher and higher. They were making consecutively higher pitches the hour that I was there. And I'm thinking, oh girl, what are you going to do right now? Like, what are you going to do right now? So then they announced Chaz and Star is going to speak about social media marketing. And I look at that center aisle and I was like, know who you is. My dad always said, know who you is and know who you isn't.

6:53And I was like, there's no way I am walking down that middle aisle and high-fiving people. There's just no way. so like the event producer was i know you look at people are gonna hear this and they're gonna be like who does she think she is like if you're gonna hear this and if you want to have an event you probably are not gonna want to book me to which i say okay because i know what i cannot do i cannot walk down a middle of an aisle where i'm in a room where i'm very unfamiliar i'm not even sure of what is being sold and i'm not even sure of the sales mechanisms that are happening so i was like listen nobody's gonna protect your brand you better walk in integrity to what you can control and so the producer put me in the back of the room and they're like we're gonna keep your song, which by and large, you know, I'll give you one guess for what song you think they played for the only female speaker at this event.

7:36What do we think it is? Could be Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys, or it could be Roar by Katy Perry. It seems like when you go to a digital marketing event and there's a female speaker, Girl on Fire. Roar. It's Roar. No other songs they're going to do. Those are the girl mantras. Ladies and gentlemen, for everybody who's working in NNV, please ask me for a list of songs that are not gender specific and maybe just maybe you know can pull from like different areas of genres okay so instead of sitting in the back of the room waiting in the back of the room for me to be called up and high five and do like a little two-bit jingle or whatever till they keep toe tapping down the aisle like thing i was placed in the back then i went all the way to the right side i walked all the way down so this is like the warm-up like i'm you know Jasmine Starr is located, blah, blah, blah, blah.

8:28And I'm down the right side of the aisle, walking to about the second row. They're like, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome from the back of the room, Jasmine Starr. I come up from row two on the right side, get up on the stage, say, thank you so much for having me. And I jump right into it. And again, what am I doing? I'm trying to do things my own way because what the gentleman on this stage had said, given a presentation before was that he stood on a stage and he said this, this like capital T-H-I-S is how you get ahead of 99 % of business owners. And so his suggestions, how to get ahead.

9:07Here's a couple of examples. Decimate your competition. He literally said, when you wake up in the morning, you want to think about taking them down. You want to put all your energy into showing them who's the new kid on the block you want them to stop ever doubting what it is you can do so how do you do that you decimate your competition you wake up and you eat your competition for a breakfast lunch and dinner and I'm sitting there and I'm like okay so everything I've done and like how I approach things is like I focus on the quality of the experience that I am providing for a consumer I am deeply dedicated to creating a customer success journey and so to do that I'm empowering my customer success team to always try their best to make it right, to do right by our customer, our user, or our client.

9:54And the way that I've gotten ahead has been through transformation. Now, if you notice the difference, he was saying decimate your competition, which in my mind puts all of the time and energy on other people, other people and things I cannot control. And so in my mind, how I was able at that point to get ahead of competition has simply been, And, well, there are things that I can control. I can control the experience that a customer has. I can control what the customer journey looks like. And I can focus on the transformation. Another thing he had said was an acronym. You know, you've got to be ABC.

10:28Always be closing. Always be closing. Every time. He's like, I want you to be, when you're in the grocery market, think of yourself like, how am I going to close this? When you're talking, you know, you're taking your kids to soccer. When you're at the PT, I want you to be ABC. ABC, always be closing. Who can I be closing? And I thought to myself, ABC always be closing. How many friends you got, bro? Like who wants to be around the guy who's got another opportunity to make money in less time. Double your income. Let's go, bro. I thought, can I make another acronym? So I decided I'm going to take what he's saying on how to get ahead.

11:00I'm going to make my own. Instead of ABC always be closing, I decided ABC always be creating. Creating value. Creating time. Creating wins for other people. Maybe you don't like always be creating. How about ABC? Always be consistent. Show up. Control what you can show up. You don't like creating or consistent. How about ABC? Always be converting. Into what? Conversation. Into what? A conversion. ABC? Yeah, we could talk about closing. Sure. But when you talk about the difference between ABC always be closing versus ABC always be converting, when somebody converts, they're making up their own mind.

11:40They get to say what they want instead of closing is I'm going to answer every single question. Oh, and I have a script. So whatever 87 excuses you have for me, I'm going to know what to say right over. I'm going to out talk you so that you feel like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Every fear has been demolished. Yeah. But by what? By force talking? By brute force? Listen, I am not saying that that doesn't work. In fact, I want to be very clear here. His approach worked because it was a bunch of people who got up, walked to the back of the room and handed over their credit cards to the mafia with the clipboards.

12:11It works. It works. I just don't think it works for me. And so when we talk about how to get ahead of 99 % of your competition, how about we decide that there's different ways that work for every single person and there's not just one single way. And so I'm sure you can tell I didn't follow his advice. And then against his advice, I decided to create my own path. And then I ABC remained consistent and I, ABC, remained creating. And on the back of the content I was creating and teaching other people, it made me realize that there's not a right or wrong, but for the sake of this conversation, how about we talk about my journey of getting ahead of 99 % of business owners who are at the same point I was.

12:54Now, to be clear, I'm not ahead of 99 % of business owners, period, not at all. But, you know, if I'm ahead of 99 % of the people who are swimming in a pool at any given time. I'm ahead of the people who are in the pool. I'm not ahead of the 99 % of all swimmers, which includes professional athletes, right? So in the terms of this conversation, how do you get ahead of 99 % of the people who all things considered are roughly around where you are in your business? So this episode, I'm just gonna be sharing about three or four things that helped me get ahead. And again, just my experience, just my advice.

13:28If you want to do the complete opposite, I totally applaud you. All I want you to do is win. And if winning requires you to do something that is totally opposite of what I'm saying, I'll clap you up. I absolutely love that. So here are the four things that I did to get ahead of 99 % of business owners at the same place I was 12 years ago. Number one, don't expect a 10-point checklist. So what do I mean by this? Is as I consecutively continued to expand, as I up-leveled and as I scaled, I was understanding that the version of who I was could no longer be the version that I was in that moment. Essentially, what got me to that point will require something else of me to get to the next level.

14:11And so early in my career, I started realizing that I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I wanted to be around other people who thought bigger and did different things. And so my first exposure into this world of personal development and business development, and specifically digital marketing, was by joining a mastermind. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that the mastermind is the only way of doing it. I am just saying that that is what happened for me. And I literally found a mastermind by reading a blog post that I had come after a Google search. I don't remember the exact Google search, like the exact phrasing of it, but it was late one night and I was asking, how can I grow my business online?

14:48And so I went through a litany of articles. I ended up on somebody's blog. I don't remember whose blog it was, but they did an interview of a gentleman who was talking about scaling with a group of people. And I was like, oh, that's what I need. And the word that he used was mastermind. I had never heard of that word before. And so I joined a live class and I watched him pitch around this thing called a mastermind. So I signed up for it. I had no idea what I was doing. And so whenever I go into a new situation, I follow the same thing I've always done since childhood. Now I'm sure there's probably some like licensed therapist who's going to hear what I'm going to have to say and say, we need to dissect this.

15:24We're going to get Freudian or Jungian. We're going to go back to my childhood to unravel it. Listen, it's just who I am. I have done this in childhood. Whenever I'm in a new situation, I immediately clam up and all I do is watch. I have a twin sister and when we were in college, we decided to backpack through Europe for four or five weeks. And my sister is the complete counter-opposite. Like the yin and yang, the sun and the moon, like a positive and a negative force. That is my sister. We look very much alike, but we are so different. Whereas in social situations or new things, my sister jumps in like she was freaking born there.

16:00So it's just like she doesn't speak French and she doesn't speak Italian. But whenever we would be backpacking, it would be, And she would act and she would say things like with just enough accent for somebody to think like, Maybe she's been studying French. So they would, you know, extend beyond the preliminary, like, Bonjour. Bianca would walk in. I can't even pretend to say the things that she would say because she would just memorize a few catchphrases or a few salutations in French and then people would think that maybe she knew French and they would just go blah, blah, blah, blah, and speak back to her.

16:30And she's just like, Paulie, vous en voulez? Like, I'm like, what are you doing? Like, we would be in these crowded train stations and my sister would just jump in. And if you've never been to, like, Italian train stations, now we're not talking about the major cities like Rome and Florence. We're talking about, like, train stations that put you out in the middle of, like, like, towns that you can't even pronounce. And, like, people were clamoring over each other, trying to get tickets on a train. And immediately what I did is, like, threw my backpack on the floor, and I just looked and I watched.

16:56I'm like, okay, who's going in what line and why? And I'm trying to count who's going where. Where are they going after this? Where do they get the ticket? I'm trying to map the whole thing out. My sister, big backpack and all, just jumps in. Excuse, excuse.

17:13Pagetaliano. Like, I'm like, what are you doing? she jumps right in those experiences have stayed with me from childhood into adulthood so I get into this mastermind and I am not saying you know I am literally I don't speak any language I'm just going to shut myself and I'm just going to be real quiet what I was really doing what I've always done is simply analyze I mean the analyzing what's going on in the situation and so I realized that in every situation, there's always a pattern. You might have to wait longer before the pattern reveals itself, but there's always a pattern. I was in the very first mastermind meeting in person in San Francisco and all of these people seem to be following a flow or speaking the same language or this is not their first rodeo.

17:58And all I'm thinking is just like, follow the flow, follow the pattern. It's going to reveal itself. Just analyze, analyze, analyze. And so what you want to do is repeat the pattern with other people until you understand the pattern and then you could break the pattern. I am not saying this is right. I am just saying that this is what I've always done. Like if I understood where to buy the ticket, then I should just repeat buying the ticket, standing in line and doing it that way until I understood ways that I can get around it. In the mastermind, my first reaction is clam up, follow the pattern, analyze.

18:29Go with the pattern until you can break the pattern. So adhere to the system without as many changes as possible until you feel confident to do that. So when I was going into the mastermind, how I was able to really maximize my opportunity, how was I using this, this idea of like clamming up, this idea of watching, how could I use it to my advantage? Well, this was what I started noticing. In the mastermind, somebody asks a question or they share a challenge. This was generally the nature of it. And then people asked clarifying questions. Like, do I understand this the right way? Have you considered this?

19:07I just want to make sure that all of these things have been done before we start ideating or offering feedback. And once that happens, then people offer insights. They're not saying, hey, this is what you should do. They'll say, have you considered this? What about making it look this way? Or this happened to me once, and while it's a little bit different, I think in this situation you could draw a parallel. Now, the person who asks the question, right, so I have a challenge where I'm asking a question. They first clarify the questions. Then people ask, have you considered this? Have you done this?

19:35and they're just asking what they've done up until that point. It's at that point that the person who asked the question shuts their mouth and then that's it. Nothing else is needed. This person is not in front of the mastermind asking, okay, but if I do that, what are the 10 steps to do that? In a mastermind, the pattern I saw was present a problem, an opportunity, or a challenge. Get clarity around it. People simply ask questions or give ideas and then the person who asks their question shuts their mouth and gets to work. They go and they create a 10-point checklist for themselves. They do not expect it from the mastermind host or anybody else in the mastermind.

20:21All they got was a bunch of questions and new perspectives of the same scenario. Then they go and create an action item for themselves. So I started learning how winners behave. You guys, this is like 2016. And for the first time in my career, I'm actually understanding how do winners behave? What do they do? Well, they ask a question. They get feedback. They create their plan. They do the work. They amend the plan. That's how winners win. That's it. And I once heard a conversation where they said, if somebody asks a question, you should be able if you're good to answer it in less than 30 seconds and the answer in and of itself should be so simple that 99 % of people won't do it so if you want to know how winners win and how they behave they ask a question they get feedback they create the plan they do the work they amend the plan because like I don't want to spill the tea but the plan that you start with hardly ever works the first time.

21:26You're always amending the plan. So winners don't need answers. Winners need insights. When I understood that I could win simply by getting insights and making a plan, I started getting ahead of my competition. Second way that I was really understanding how to leverage the things that I was learning, how to get ahead of the competition, was learning from others and other fields, other industries. I'm telling you, this is like the best kept secret that was one, probably never a secret. I just never knew about it. And now I want to share it with everybody. So early in my career, I went to an event called Alt Summit.

22:07I can't even explain why or what called me there. I just thought, you know, I need to be in Salt Lake City in February in the dead of cold where everything in this city is white because it's covered in slope. and it's like negative degrees not like negative degrees it is negative degrees why i needed to go at that time i don't know all i just knew was i need to go out and meet different people now this event attracted a wide array of people though this was very much early in like my blogging days and so i was going there and a large part of the attendees were fashion bloggers they were bloggers who were into sewing or not print making but like when they come up with their designs like you cope with the design and then you follow the design.

22:49I don't know the exact words of it. So you can just see like I'm at this event and a lot of the content and a lot of the networking and mixers and things that they're talking about doesn't have to do with my business. But I just wanted to see the way that different industries and different businesses are run because I could get that information and start distilling it. How could I use it in my industry or how could I do what they're doing in my own way? It was simply seeing a different industry in the way it's done to break your frame of what's currently happening and what's currently possible for yours.

23:15A few years later went to an event called woo and wellness now i wouldn't necessarily consider myself to be like very woo i'm probably moderately woo i'm very much into wellness and so i went to this one day event and we did things that were so far out of my comfort zone okay like we had a two-hour silent tea ceremony in the middle of a vegetable garden and we're sitting on the dirt it's completely silent and they have like a like this big like flower circle they get this like mandala and we have this color back there's a design of these flowers and you sit there and they do a very traditional tea ceremony and everybody's silent and you're just sitting in this vegetable garden and you drink nine cups of tea i was like okay i've never done this being alone with my thoughts for two hours was crazy and powerful and life-changing we did sound baths have you ever done a sound bath like you basically take a nap and like the music vibrates at a certain frequency that's supposed to be when you're at your calmest state and they had laid out these like knit blankets like I don't know in Spanish you call them a serapé I don't know I don't know what else to call it in English I literally I'm just like this is a knit blanket anyway they had these serapés laid on the floor and then they had like these bean like pillows and then you just lay there and like they have these instruments and they just play and there's like gongs and you're like this is so weird and then you like kind of like meditate and fall asleep it was crazy we also had a session you guys all this is in one day if you can believe it or not.

24:43We also had this section where we're standing in like, not like a dirt field, but like kind of, there's not a lot of plants, right? So it's trees, but it's mostly just dirt. And so then they have like this DJ who sets up this like pop-up speaker area. And so then we have this guy who comes in from LA and he has these big flowy, almost like hippie MC Hammer pants. And he has these dreads and he takes off his shirt. He's built like, like his six pack has a 12 pack, you know and so then he's just like we're gonna fall into our bodies he's like we're gonna let every preconceived notion go we're just gonna be ourselves we're gonna find ourselves in movement and the dj is playing music and i can tell you the guy is like the rusting his hips and moving his shoulders and like arms above you and they're swinging and you're just swaying side to side and then you're like concave and then you're convex and your hips are rolling from side to side and you feel stupid you feel dumb and then all of a sudden you get to a point where you're doing it 15 or 20 minutes where you're like, well, doing it halfway, you're missing the whole point.

25:44And so then I just decided, listen, everybody else here is doing the same stupid thing. And so I'm just going to concave and convex and I'm going to be moving. And the minute I stopped caring, I just started having fun. I let my body do whatever my body wanted to do. I went to an event of mixed business owners, eight and nine figure business owners. And the goal was to mix and people who are outside of what it is you do. And I happened to be sitting at a table with a gentleman who ran a CRM, but specifically for dentists. And he had explained to me what this whole idea was, was that sure, there's a lot of CRMs out there.

26:25I mean, you have like HubSpot or you have Dubsado or you have a lot of HoneyBook. There's a bunch of CRMs. And what he was saying was that dentist wanted a CRM that was very specific to their industry. And essentially, the dentist just wanted to be a dentist. And what the dentist really wanted was a business in a box, just a solution that would get from like front end to back end and fulfillment and let the dentist be the dentist. It was essentially a done for you system. And my eyes were opened to the power of creating a service that's not unique, but that's highly specific to an industry. So what did I learned.