Laying Bricks: Behind the Scenes of My Biggest Business Lessons This Quarter

0:00And I just had to take a moment to say, there's more of this. There's more of this. If we don't pause to actually realize what is in front of us and saying, this right here is the most beautiful thing. If we don't appreciate it, how can we expect or accept more of that abundance to come? Building a business is never what it looks like on the outside. So what I want to do with this episode is bring you in on the inside so you get a fuller picture. What I'm diving into right now is something I do every quarter. I do a quarterly review. Here's why. I firmly believe that if I show you and bring you along on everything behind the scenes, that there can never be an opportunity for anybody to say, oh, she got lucky.

0:41Oh, opportunities just happened to come her way. Or, oh, things fall into place for that girl. Hardly. Not at all. So this is what I call laying bricks. I've been saying this from the beginning. I kind of said it in the beginning like it was like a bad title for a podcast, laying bricks, because laying bricks to the foundation that I'm going to be building. And it kind of stuck. So it's kind of like one of those childhood nicknames that you get that just keeps on sticking with you into adulthood. So here we are laying bricks. And yes, we are still using these bricks to lay foundations for what it is you want.

1:12And also because I have a chip on my shoulder, I'm also using the bricks that people throw at me to lay it on down here. let's go okay so one thing that I firmly believe is that I'm going to be using small opportunities to create big results and I hope that you can do the same thing because oftentimes we think that wins come in like a singular time or that momentum comes in a singular time but it's actually a bunch of small things I've always for the longest time wished for a silver bullet but what I've come to realize over time, it's like a thousand clay bullets that will actually make a difference as I grow a business.

1:50So you and me, let's start filling our like BB guns with clay bullets because we're out here going to be making some changes. So this particular Langbrooks episode, this is quarter to 2026. I am recording at the very end of June. So we'll go back. Quarter two is April through June. So we'll start at the beginning, April 6th. That was my birthday. I am an Aries. I am a fire sign and my birthstone is diamond. Yes. Okay, so one thing that I realized is as I went to my birthday, which is the very thing that I wanted, my daughter had said, Mom, I know what you want for your birthday. I said, do tell.

2:26She says, you want to go to Disneyland? You know what? I absolutely did. And so, of course, as an entrepreneur, you can't go anywhere without thinking about business. So while I was at Disneyland enjoying every last minute, I couldn't help but realize that what I love to do, build brands and market them is what Disney has done so extraordinarily well. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you my birthday post because it's not enough for me to say, it's my birthday, let's have some fun. But I actually wanted to distill it from a business perspective because business and life for me are intermingled and I love it so much.

2:59So let's dive in. I spent my birthday at Disneyland and it exposed everything you need to know about winning in business. Disneyland doesn't sell tickets. They're selling transformation, emotion, identity. You don't enter a park. You enter a story. You don't wait in line. You build anticipation. You don't buy merch. You take home identity. So here's brand lesson number one. Consistency builds trust. Every detail, smell, music, language, it's intentional. Your brand is what people experience repeatedly. Brand lesson number two. Disney doesn't break character ever. So where is your business accidentally breaking the magic?

3:43Brand lesson number three, emotion is the product. People won't remember every detail, but they'll remember how you made them feel. So here's a reminder, don't just build a business, build something that people feel. What's the last brand that made you feel something? I've been told that a brand is a series of experiences and memories that when you're taken together, it empowers a consumer to choose one brand over another. And that is the proper definition. But what I think Disney nails above all else is that a brand is a feeling. And when we grow our businesses, it's really hard to ask ourselves, how am I making somebody feel?

4:25What is my client? What does my customer feel? But the minute you have a deep understanding of how they're currently feeling and what they want to feel, that is how you build your brand. by replicating that feeling again and again and again. So happy birthday to me. I got a branding lesson from Walt Disney himself. This brings us to April 8th through the 11th. I was in Nashville for an eight-figure female mastermind. Now, I find so much value in getting around other entrepreneurs with similar businesses, similar states of businesses, similar growth patterns of businesses, because it's challenging what I think is possible.

5:01I want to be around other people who are doing extraordinary things to break my frame of reality. So while I'm not gonna get into every single detail that we went over, I'm gonna talk about the three biggest takeaways that I had so that you might be able to take them and apply them to your business. Now, I clearly realized that when I was there, that there is a difference between listening and hearing. I think it's common for entrepreneurs that we're all like visionaries, we're all ready, we all wanna jump, but there is a difference of truly listening to what's being said in between the lines and hearing what somebody is saying.

5:36So I realized that I have a gift and I don't know if it's been honed over the years or if it's just something innate. But one thing I deeply realized is that when somebody says something, I have the ability to read in between the lines or to hear what they're actually not saying. And so when I was there at the mastermind, I realized that I just don't need to hear what they're saying. If I could truly listen to what it is they're saying, I would walk away with a greater lesson and perhaps I could ask a question in a different way that might challenge their beliefs. So one of the things that I'm working on this year is to understand that I have a gift.

6:14Don't question that gift and use that gift. So I've used it as an entrepreneur with my team. When somebody is saying X, I'm like, what's really going on here? So I start asking questions around it to get curious. When I am working with clients, I've always said that there's the question and then there's the underlying question. What needs to be asked that people don't have the courage or perhaps the confidence to ask? That's the underlying question. So as you are actually going and you're working with your team or your family or even with yourself, ask yourself, I am asking a question, but what am I not saying?

6:50What do I wish I could say? How do we as entrepreneurs hear what our clients are saying, but not clearly asking for? So that was lesson number one. Trust in your ability to answer the underlying questions. Lesson number two. I wanted to start using this as a skill when it comes to strategy. My biggest takeaway is when you get into these masterminds, we're really not talking about like nitty gritty, step by step. These are big ideas and then everybody can take that big idea and apply it to their own business their own way. So let's break this down with an example. There was a woman who asked a question around her mastermind strategy.

7:29Now, I'm not going to get into the details of her question, but she was talking about what she should be doing with this mastermind because it felt very heavy in her business. And so then immediately people were answering the question with really great advice. But then I paused and I said, wait, I hear the question, but what are we trying to solve for? Now, that leads to the biggest takeaway, number two, is there's a difference between answering and a difference between solving. Now, if we knew what we were solving for, the answer completely changes. Because people were giving answers that were a wide variety, all great, all amazing.

8:08But then I paused and I asked her, are we trying to solve for you having more time because you feel the mastermind is taking so much time? Are we trying to solve for more money because you would like to grow the mastermind? Are you trying to optimize for more freedom because energetically it takes up a lot of space in your business? What are we trying to solve for? And then she paused. And then she realized, oh, yeah, this is what I'm solving for. She knew it, but didn't articulate it. Now, the minute she had said, here's my question, this is what I'm trying to solve for, everybody in the room was like, attack.

8:44It was just like, ants on honey, we got this. And within five minutes, the minute we had the question, and then we knew what we were solving for, what was her greatest pressure point? It wasn't money. And it wasn't time. We were trying to solve for her being able to add freedom where it felt like shackles. So lesson number one, there's a difference between listening and hearing and trusting that we can answer the question below the question. And then the second part would be really trying to understand there are differences between answers and what we're solving for. Okay, this is gonna go back down to a big takeaway for me and that is to listen more than you speak.

9:26I think that when I get nervous, I use four times the amount of words that I need to. So as I am creating this show right now, I am looking down at my notes and I have challenged myself to only put the words that are necessary and everything else has to be free flow. So the biggest, the third biggest lesson that I took from Nashville is to listen more than you speak. And I think that my temptation when I get nervous is to use more words the same way I get nervous creating this show. But the truth of the matter is when you are around smart people and you are listening to the words that they use and the insights that they have and the questions they ask.

10:07I came to learn by being really quiet on this trip that the quality of the questions that people are asking are indications of just how brilliant they are. I just kind of had my head down and I was thinking, and I'm listening to the types of questions. And I said, Jasmine, listen to these questions, take these questions home and start applying these style of questions to your own business. Because I don't live in a mastermind. Like I literally have experiences at a mastermind and then you come home. So it's great if you go and you have an experience at a mastermind and you're fully pumped up and you have answers to your questions then.

10:41But what happens when you go home? I kept on looking at this mastermind is what patterns, what things can you learn that you can take home and that will serve you for the rest of the year? So listening more than I spoke was lesson number three. And to trust that I can learn there a framework that I could take home and apply to my business and apply it here on the podcast too. All right. So directly from Nashville, I flew to Dallas. I spoke twice at one event. Now I was speaking about building a brand and I was speaking about marketing and I was teaching a bunch of corporate executives how to build a brand.

11:19And these were all corporate executives in the direct selling industry. So it's the biggest conference in this industry. There were thousands of people in the room. It was such an honor to speak. But one of the cool things is whenever I go to these conferences, even if I'm not in direct selling, I was able to go to these workshops and I'm just sitting there. I'm sitting in legal workshops. I'm sitting in state of the industry workshops. I just want to know what's going on in other industries. I'm genuinely curious as an entrepreneur, like what do I need to know? What other things are happening in other industries that I can bring here in my own industry.

11:50So I had the ability to speak and I came in and I had my keynotes ready and I was ready. And the day that I flew in from Nashville to Dallas, I got word that my uncle unexpectedly died. And I have to tell you, trying to balance your personal life and your business, and I knew that I was there and I was booked as a professional. And one of the biggest lessons that I learned is that I have the ability to be professional and still feel all of the feelings. And so I didn't realize then, but like quarter two was shaping up to be a really tough quarter for me. It was a lot at this time. There was a lot of family dynamic that was happening.

12:31It was really tough with my family's health. And then for my uncle to die unexpectedly, my mother was his caretaker. He had special needs. So it was just like a lot. So in Dallas, completely by myself, because JD and Luna flew with me to Nashville. They flew home because we didn't want to keep her out of school that long. So I'm in Dallas. I'm by myself. And I sat at the edge of the bed. And I had to have one of these conversations where you're like, he's on to the next. He's journeying. He is in a better place. There's nothing I can do in this moment other than talking with my family and supporting my mom.

13:04And so it was on that that the next day I had to stand up, wake up and face what was one of the hardest keynotes to give because you have to show up in deep pain. And that was a thing that I hope I never have to do again, but it also showed how much I've grown as a person. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that there are so many things that are happening behind the scene in somebody's life that we just don't see. But yet what we learn as entrepreneurs is having the ability when we show up in difficult times, we're growing a different muscle. And for that, I am deeply appreciative. Okay. Now at the end of May, y 'all, I mean, it is just, it's going to be a rough podcast day.

13:45Let me tell you, because at the end of April, going into the middle of May, another pretty difficult thing had happened. I have been working with a mentor for six years. And earlier this year, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. It was incurable. And so it was very hard for me to work through those emotions because she and I got very close professionally and then later personally. I considered her not just a mentor, but she'd become a friend. So the news had been very, very hard for me. And we thought that she would be with us through the holidays and perhaps into early 2027. And so what she said was, I'm choosing five people to have a bucket list experience with.

14:28And so she chose five of the closest people in her life. And she went to different places around the world, France, Italy, Japan. And so when she invited myself, JD and Luna to Mexico City, I was so excited. We'd spent months planning it. We were ready to go. And she's like, JD, you're going to take me on a taco tour. And this is how we're going to live it up. And so two days before her trip, I got a message from her and she just wasn't in the best state. And she said, Jasmine, we're going to go to Mexico City. I just need a little bit of time to recoup. I've done a lot of traveling. It took a toll on my body.

15:02I said, absolutely. So two days before we were supposed to leave to Mexico city, we canceled the trip. And it was during that time that I had to deeply reflect on. Now you have some time in your calendar. What are you going to do? I had unexpected blank space. Now I will tell you that what I wanted to do was work because working helps me not feel. And so I didn't want to feel the loss of my uncle and what I thought was going to be the loss of my mentor. So I said, okay, you're just going to use these days and you're just going to work. And then I decided that this version of me, the best thing I could do was simply to take time and just be.

15:47So I did things that I felt were really good in settling for my nervous system. So I went and did meditation, decided to do a staycation, just spent really time like unplugged with my family. And that was really healing and it was good and it was what I needed. It was divinely appointed and it was unexpected. So came back, she said, Jasmine, don't worry, I'm good. We're going to be good. We're So I hung on to that. May 8th, we hosted a lunch and learn. I've mentioned this before. We have these opportunities to connect with our team. And as we're building out a coaching team for the consistent 10 K, which has been one of the coolest experiences ever, I get to work with other professional business coaches and they're taking their expertise and they're coming in and they're using our methodology to help other business owners.

16:36It's been really incredible. So we had this lunch and learn. And so JD, my husband and business partner goes and arranges for everybody to get pizza. And we live, we have a virtual team. So we're everywhere from West Coast to East Coast and everybody's getting their meal and we're having an opportunity to connect via Zoom and we're talking about communication. Now I was talking about communication in two ways. One, communication amongst our team. I'd recently read a study that you have 40 % more efficiency. You're more effective as a team if you have clear ways to communicate. The minute I read that stat, I was like, oh my gosh, team, I wanna get 40 % better.

17:10How are we communicating? So we talked about building our ways of communicating amongst the team. And then secondly, how we're communicating with our clients. How are we making sure that they are getting the results that they want, how they want? And we have a pretty big guarantee. We have a 90-day program with an ROI guarantee. And I'm like, y 'all, what do we need to do? How do we need to behave? And how do we need to communicate with our clients to ensure that that's happening? That lunch and learn was really special. But here's the thing. When somebody sees in the future, because I'm just calling my shot in the future.

17:38When somebody sees the business and how many successful coaches and clients we have, I never want them to say that it happened. It is literally the small things building the culture in the most getaway possible. It's like, since when does like Pizza Hut or Domino's become like, you know, the eight, nine figure business? Like right now, like reaching out to people and saying, I see you. Let's do something great. Let's build from the bottom and let's make sure that this foundation is the foundation that's going to get us to where we want to go. Okay, that was May 8th. May 13th to the 17th, J.D. Loon and I flew to Miami.

18:14I'm a part of an executive coaching program called Hampton. And this is where I get together. I've been with these guys three years. There is nine or 10 of us, and we have been able to travel the world. We meet once a year in person, and we meet every single month. And this is what they call like your board. You are bringing them a ton of things, personal and professional to work through. Now, I will say, as the only female in the group, I have a tendency to want a little bit more structure and order than that's there. It is literally like, here are the dates, here's the hotel, everybody just show up.

18:49So there isn't like an itinerary, there isn't like clear conversations, which is fine. This is me learning, okay, side note, I joined this program because I knew it was predominantly men. And at the time, I was really focused on building out our SaaS application, a tech company. This is like very like tech oriented and I'm just going to be honest and I'm just going to say it for what it is. I really, I know, like, do you see my lip? It's like shaking because I'm about to say something that might make me a little uncomfortable, but it's just the truth. So I'm going to spit my truth. I would rather you have me like not like me because of my truth.

19:19I'm just going to say it. I partly joined this program because I wanted to learn how to think like a man. I wanted to know how men worked behind closed doors and in boardrooms. I hate admitting it, but that's what it is. I have learned so much just by watching how they communicate with each other, how they do business with one and each other, how they do business with other people in the group. And I'm listening and I'm seeing the way that they think. And let me tell you, it's very different than how I think. Now, I get to pick and choose what I find beneficial from there. But as we were there in Miami, we have our facilitator.

19:53So he goes with us. It's really cool. So he met us there in Miami. And on day one, we were just vibing. We are living the Miami life. It was great. But then the next day I was like, are we gonna have a little bit more structure? And so then the facilitator, his name is Casey. He asked me, well, do you have any suggestions? I was like All my earrings. I have suggestions So what we decided to do was segment our day and the first part of the day We were going to be by the beach and we were going to be talking about what was working in our business So we all get down there and of course i'm like I I brought my timer you guys I'm gonna bring a timer because I want to make sure that we can all talk about each other's businesses So I set a 10 minute timer.

20:29You were there to talk about what was working in your business. And then there was a couple of minutes for people to ask around what that was. All 10 of us had about 10 minutes. We were out there for a couple hours. It was awesome. It was so invigorating. So people are like, well, what kind of conversations? We're all doing very different businesses. So here's an example. There's one guy, his name is Love. He has a toy business, right? So he's doing multiple seven figures on creating toys. And he licenses these toys. I'm not going to get too much more into the specifics of his business, but he has a team of creators that are creating content on separate YouTube channels that are all aggregating content, information, marketing back to his main hub for the very thing he sells.

21:06And so his next move was to create a content house in Austin, Texas for his toys. So these are a bunch of 20 something year olds who have a whole house to themselves to create content for their toys. Now there is another gentleman in the group and now he does merchandise like clothing for boutique owners. So what kind of business, like a business doing clothing for boutique owners and then a company doing toys for like eight to 10 year olds. What would they ever have in common? Well, this business owner is looking and hearing about how he's aggregating content creators for the brand and creating platforms and locations and shoot days for them.

21:39And he says, I'm going to take that idea and I'm going to apply it in my business to totally different industries, totally different businesses. But when you're figuring out what's working, you ask yourself, how can I apply that to my business? Loved, loved, loved it. And then later part in the day we talked about what wasn't working in our business. And this is where it kind of gets a little more uncomfortable because you have to be a hundred percent honest. If you aren't self aware to know what's not working and then have the humility to share it with other people. I mean, you guys, it feels like you're naked.

22:07You're talking about the worst things that are happening in your business and people are just looking at you and be like, we got you like, okay. So here's a very simple, very simple example. So one of the guys in the group, he has a, a software platform for people in the food service industry. So he was a very famous chef decided to create a platform. And so he's talking about how does he create like analog and part of like their tech aspect. So he's talking about like, how do you take like a cookbook and mix it with, and so he's asking all of these questions. Now, mind you, he's talking to like 10 guys and one girl and all the guys are giving him ideas about like this cookbook and aggregation of what it would mean.

22:43And so then I just, I'm there on my phone and I go to like chat daddy and I type in, what is the average percentage of male versus female using cookbooks and like the statistic was like 68 percent of people using cookbooks are female and so he's getting this information from a bunch of guys on like how a cookbook might work in an analog space and I was like you guys I love you but these ideas probably don't mean much because his demographic is female and you guys are all thinking the way that men, like you got, these ideas are like good, but like you wouldn't even use them. You're trying to get into the mind of women.

23:20So I just think that this is a moot point. And I turned to him, I was like, you need to get a group of women to give you insights on how to use and make an analog cookbook along with your platform, because they're going to be your main users. Yeah, obviously I'm biased because I'm a woman, but also a little bit of like chat GPT was able to like keep the main thing, the main thing. And so having a day like this and a space like this to get a bunch of different perspectives on your business is really, really, really great. And I think it was really important and I've maintained this and I know that people might disagree and I'm okay.

23:54I don't care about people's opinions. I made the commitment with my husband to the best of our ability, travel together at these events. Now he is the primary caretaker of Luna while I am out doing these things. Now, after like a very long day of like ideation and talking, the group of us decided to get into the pool before we went into dinner. So JD and Luna were doing their own thing. They were at the Miami Children's Museum. Side note, that place is incredible. If you're ever in Miami, take the time to go. It's absolutely incredible. It's massive. So I'm in the pool and unbeknownst to me, JD and Luna get pool chairs by where our group was hanging out.