My Raw and Real Q2 Business Review

0:00If you've been feeling stuck in your business and wondering if you're the reason it's not growing faster, I have something for you. I'm hosting a free, no-pitch, live class called Three Money Beliefs That Made Me Millions. And I'm sharing the exact mindset shifts that helped me go from million-dollar years to million-dollar months. This isn't fluff. It is a surprising strategy that changed everything for me, and I want to share it with you. Like I said, no pitch, no fluff, just you and me talking about how we shift our beliefs around money to make you millions. Save your seat now at jasminestar.com forward slash millions.

0:32I can't wait to see you there. You're in the right room. Find ways to use your skills to help people and add value. I just kept on reminding myself, like you're in the right room. Use your skills to help add value. Have you ever looked at an entrepreneur and wondered how they're building it? Does it ever look so flawless on the outside that you can't help but like stand back and you're like, what in the world are they doing? Are they that different? Are they so special? How do they make it look so easy when you know behind the scenes how hard it is. Welcome to the Jasmine Starr Show, where I am dedicated to sharing everything I know and how I'm building in real time so that you can do it in half the time and get better the results.

1:12I bring an amazing guest to the show, but today I'm going to be focusing on a quarterly review. So I do these every single quarter. And I'm going to take a little side note. I've said this a thousand times before. I'm only doing this based on the feedback that I get. If you appreciate hearing these quarterly reviews about the licks and the bricks, the licks I'm taking and the bricks I'm laying for my future foundation of the business that I am building, please let me know. I answer my own DMs on Instagram, as well as emails, as well as seeing YouTube comments. I just want to say thank you for that.

1:46But literally, I'm only making this show for other people. And so if these episodes aren't resonating, I'm totally not offended. but if you want to hear them, the only way that I know that is if you give a little bit of a shout out to me, letting me know that you listened and that it was impactful. I'm creating this episode because I wish that the people who I looked up to were sharing the behind the scenes of what they were doing on a quarterly basis. And so I am just putting out what I ultimately want to get from others. And if it's resonating with you, holler at your girl, this is why we do them.

2:15So building a business in public isn't easy. Building a business in public is not for the faint of heart. I sat on the couch right behind me with my husband a couple of days ago and I had said is this the thing I want to do do I want to continue creating content that's positioning my personal brand as a division of the business because it's hard and it feels very exposing and it feels very vulnerable and to be able to go out and talk about the work that you're doing behind the scenes more than half of it that probably won't work uh that's not the easiest thing and it's not for the faint of heart.

2:49And yet I'm continuously doing it until it doesn't serve me any longer. So I just want to want to start there by saying a lot of the stuff that we're doing is with good intention and good hope and nothing is a guarantee. As a business owner, the game that we play, the ways that we wake up in the morning, the late nights, the unexpected weekends, the things that you hope really go well and then end up going nowhere and then finding the wherewithal to get up and do it again and again, it makes you on some days think, am I actually legitimately crazy that I would come back to do this thing? Am I volunteering to sign up for the madness that is building a business?

3:23And the answer is, if you got to this point in the episode, yes. Yes, it is. So welcome to my version of crazy. I was talking to JD last night and we were driving through Los Angeles and we went back through a neighborhood that I had done a big photo shoot in. We were in Venice, California, and he had looked around and he said, you're crazy. I was like, I'm sorry, what? We had just finished dinner. I'm putting on my safety belt. We're driving down. But he's like, you're crazy. I said, what do you mean? And he's like, the fact that 15 years ago you were shooting in these streets on those photo shoots.

3:58He's like, you had just hustled your way to get there and do those types of gigs. I just kind of sat with it. And then later on, I had sent him a text message when we had gone our separate ways. And I said, I am crazy and I am a hustler, but you're crazier for marrying the crazy girl. Facts. So welcome to the show. If you are enjoying this version of crazy, who's crazier? The person who's talking or the person who's watching the person talking about the crazy ideas? Welcome, I'm so happy you're here. We're gonna be focusing on quarter two of 2025. So this is April, May, and June. I'll start off at the beginning of the month of April.

4:36That was my birthday. I have a twin sister. Her name is Bianca Flower. My name is Jasmine Starr. We celebrate our birthdays together. and I just wanted to highlight this one tiny little thing about maybe giving insight into my business. So my dad out of the blue, we usually do very simple birthday dinners in my family. It's my dad will cook for us. We eat at my parents' house. But this year he wanted to do something different. He wanted to create this grand gesture. So he tells the family, we're going out to Newport Beach. I'm going to take you out to wherever. But he had an idea. He wanted to go to this place called Javier's in Newport Beach.

5:07Now, let me just set the scene for Javier's. it is not your average Mexican restaurant. I am pretty sure my dad heard that Javier's is the Mexican restaurant in Newport. And in his mind, he's thinking about like the streets in Boyle Heights where we all grew up and was like, I'm going to take them out to Mexican. What he doesn't know is that Javier's on a Sunday is basically like the out and about be seen, pull your Ferrari up to the front and the women for Sunday brunch are dressed in like club attire. Speaking of clubbing, the music in the restaurant is so loud. They have a hard time hearing the conversations that are happening across from you, but you absolutely endure this spectacle because there are these gorgeous views of the ocean right across the street and everything is better with chips and guacamole.

5:54So we say, okay, dad, we're going to go to Javier's and he has no idea what we're pulling into. And so when we pull up and there's a line that's wrapping around, around the restaurant, and then the valet is filled with every designer car. And the guys, oh, let's not forget the guys. The guys in their like, dare I say, bedazzled jeans and like the low cut shirts. And like, they're wearing sunglasses indoors. Okay, now that you have a scene set, they set us at our table. And within a few minutes, my dad's like, I now get it. And I said, what do you get, dad? He's like, I called the restaurant to see if I could bring in mariachis.

6:25And they said, no. And I said, why? Why can't we bring in mariachis? And I was like, yeah, dad, this is basically a club. No mariachis allowed. I share that story because that is who I am. That is the family from which I come. And I think that having this juxtaposition between the culture of who I am and the culture of what I love and then stepping into the next version of myself to be able to sit at that restaurant with my family at that time was a convergence of two worlds and all of it was so, so, so beautiful and so special. But very true to our family. After dinner, they wanted to do a birthday cake at the restaurant.

7:00My dad's like, can we go to your housework gig? And I was like, absolutely, let's just roll and do how it is that we do. Shortly thereafter, April 9th, the 11th, I hosted a mastermind event here in Newport Beach. Now, I wanna go over a few of the key topics around what we covered, because I want to bring you into the journey of what that is. We talked about preparing how to sell your business, how we're leveraging AI in your business, using your intuition to grow strategically, and how to scale leadership. Because it was our last in-person event of the mastermind, I wanted to highlight a few key milestones for people in the group.

7:36In our eight months together, there was a woman who sold her business and that connection came on behalf of somebody in the mastermind. We had another woman who was buying a business and she had never considered it before the mastermind. There was a woman who there at that live event decided to take on tech investors. We had a guest speaker by the name of Sheba Kani. she came in and the woman was going to bootstrap the entire business. And she said, I am going to reach out to people who wanted to invest. And there on our three-day event, she'd already had two people give consideration for that investment.

8:11There was connections for consultants that people needed, recruiters that people needed, developers for platforms that people needed. I think that having a room where people are seen, felt, and heard all seven-figure founders as they scale to eight was so powerful. And I wanted to take a second to document that this is the room that I feel so proud to create and foster. And I believe that the mastermind is going to serve a bigger purpose for me in the future. Even if right now I'm saying this is a phenomenal thing, I actually think it's going to be something far bigger and better in my future.

8:41That is a brick that I am laying in 2025 so that it expands to something even greater in 26 and 27 to 28. April 16th was a deep work day. You've been, I've talked about the deep work days on my podcast. I talk about how they've been so impactful. I started deep work days at the top of 2025 where I said once a month, no meetings, no tasks, no nothing. This is an opportunity for me to go deep on the business, to work on the business and not in the business, to cast a vision for the future. And on this particular day, I signed up for a CEO bootcamp. I had never even heard of this thing. I saw it like on Twitter.

9:17and I joined it because they had promised of how to build people systems, and I was like, great. So I signed up for the day. I spent that day building out people systems, and what we wanted to do is to build systems while maintaining our standards. What are our standards? And then to step into being unapologetic. In fact, when I now talk to people about it, they're like, wow, I can't believe you could ask your team to do that. And I always respond, now, we have a set of standards. Those standards might not be for everybody, but these are the standards of our team. And so if we want to scale our business in our own way, then we're going to ask people to set to those standards.

9:52And that's what systems do. And I felt like I just walked away from the CEO bootcamp with a lot more strength and fortitude around our systems. April 18th was a mental health day. So once a month, our team is given a day that we denote for mental health. You can do whatever the heck you want on that day. And so I feel really proud. Every time we go on a mental health day, I'm able to look across from JD and say, we're building the type of business that we would like to be a part of. And that felt really good. So what did I do on my mental health date? Well, I got my hair done. And then I went and had LASIK surgery.

10:24Y 'all, April was a big month because your girl had vision. I can now see entirely differently. If anybody wants to know if it was worth it, I am like 12 out of 10 endorse it. Five stars. Would repeat. It was amazing. In fact, my twin sister is going to get LASIK and one of my friends is going to get LASIK. Basically, I'm a walking poster child for LASIK. April 23rd to the 26th, I was in Austin and Houston, Texas. So I was invited to be a mentor for the Small Business Challenge. It's hosted by Inc. Magazine and the UPS Store. They bring in three mentors where you come in and you work with a business owner.

10:58And over a period of time, you help get their business because they're going to be pitching to people for the chance to win$35 ,000 for their business. I knew that I was going to take that as an opportunity. and my travel was included as part of being the mentor. So I was like, well, I want to double dip in behalf of my business. So while I was in Austin, I created a day to podcast. I invited local Austin entrepreneurs that I wanted to interview for a while. We podcasted there and it felt like it was really great. It was a very quick trip. Landed in Austin in the evening. We did some press. The next day I did the live event.

11:34Jade and I went to dinner. The next morning, very early in the morning, I did podcasting. Then we hit the ground to Houston, Texas, where I attended an event for Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. I was in Houston because I am at a place in my life where I'm essentially trying to live to 120 years old. I'm joking and I'm totally not joking. I am changing the way that I lift weights. I am changing the way that I eat. I am changing the way that I sleep. And I am learning so much from Dr. Gabrielle Lyon that I paid with my own money, did not get a homie hookup. She is my sweet friend and I freaking love her. but I'm also paying because I want to go to an event like a guest.

12:10And it was absolutely incredible. So for me, it was like the perfect dream day. I was able to serve other businesses as part of the challenge. I was able to serve my business and create content as part of the podcast. And then I was able to do like mind, body, health, all in alignment to expanding my business. That was in April. The brick I was laying for myself in the future was to be the type of grandma I know. My daughter's five and I'm talking about being a grandma. I want to be a businesses and I want to be there for my daughter. I want to be there for my grandchildren. And so these are the decisions that I'm making now.

12:42Okay. An important note that I would just want to take into consideration all during Q2. So May, April, and June, I have been recording content for the consistent 10 K. We started building out the program consistent 10 K November, December of 2024. So we have been creating this and finally started getting to the opportunity where we were going to be recording. So while I'm not saying, oh, I only recorded during these days and this is the specific brick, I was saying all of this was going on behind the scenes. So in addition to serving as an advisor for companies, speaking, podcasting, creating content, we added on a whole new project.

13:24And that was here again, something that you have to fit into a schedule. And so I will say that quarter to 2025 was really, really exhausting. During also that time, we decided to invest in building out a sales team. So that added on more consulting time, more education time. And I look back at that and I think I'm so proud of the decisions that I make. I'm also really proud that that's not the norm in my business because I don't think that I would be able to keep that pace. I'm talking about mornings, 4.30 in the morning and then closing my computer at 5.30 or 6 at night. I say that because I believe that there are times in our careers where we have to run extraordinarily hard to set up systems that then allow us to pull back.

14:07I want my business to serve my life. I don't want my life to serve my business. And so if I put on the mindset of I'm hauling in quarter two, that way I can look at quarter three and quarter four and say, great, Now we scale. So we were very, very focused on what are the results? What are the results that we want and need to define our level of success and our commitment to this? And so I believe that this program is going to change lives. I also believe that we are gonna be putting out our best work. I also believe that this is an opportunity to flex a new muscle for a new program in a new way.

14:41And it makes me so, so excited. So that brings me to May. That was April. Now, I decided to build out a sales team from the ground up. You've heard me talk about this loosely on the podcast up until now, but here we are in May. We shifted gears. I created a podcast around why I decided to shift gears and hire a consultant and change the way that we were building out our team. That was a podcast that I recorded recently. I'll be sure to link it in the show notes. We can get more into that, but here is just high level. What are the things that you're doing? And so I wanted to create this team. I also was leveraging other resources and people around sales that I had built out with personal relationships.

15:24Blake Rocha had been on my podcast before, and he had a direct connection to Shelby Sapp. I will link both of their podcasts in this podcast so you can actually see the iterations. I interviewed Blake in early 2025. He became a partner with Shelby Sapp. I reached out to him personally and I said, listen, I know Shelby doesn't do a lot of press. I know she doesn't do a lot of podcasts. Can she come out here to my house for this podcast? And then before the podcast, can we meet for coffee so that we can strategize around a few other things? He said, yes, yes, and yes. And so all of these things are tiny bricks.

15:57I record this podcast to itemize the brick that was Blake Rocha, the brick that was when Blake reached out to me for a connection to a consultant. I connected him that did very well for his business. I asked for a favor. He more than obliged. Myself, Blake, and Shelby met for coffee before the podcast to strategize other opportunities. I interviewed Shelby so that she can share her insights on sales, specifically sales for females. All of these bricks were laying into something much bigger in the future. Even if that future feels a little fuzzy, I know that I'm laying bricks towards a really strong foundation, even if it's just relationally.

16:32Okay, so I recorded six podcasts that day, then caught a red-eye flight to Nashville for a last-minute mastermind. That was that episode that I had just mentioned about talking about Shelby, talking about this mastermind, talking about Nashville. So it was a strategic one-day mastermind hosted by Amy Porterfield. Now, she was not the official host. We just all happened to be in Nashville. That's where she lives. And she's like, well, if everybody doesn't be in Nashville, everybody just come to my house and let's strategize. And so I left Friday. I arrived midnight Nashville. We mastermind on Saturday.

17:01I had a one-hour meeting on Sunday and then got a flight home. That brings us to May 5th, and that starts the applications for my next mastermind. Now, I had created an episode talking about the strategy that we're using to fill our funnel for seven-figure entrepreneurs for specific offers. And here, I wanted to make sure that I denoted the brick that is this mastermind. We had ended the mastermind in April, and by May, we were bringing in a new cohort. Very excited. There was about a 43 % renewal rate from the first mastermind, which was awesome and encouraging for us. But you know me, I'm like, well, how do I increase that?

17:39What do I need to do? I got into individual conversations with every person who decided to join the mastermind again. And I wanted to learn even more about them. There were three common traits around the people who decided to join us for cohort number two. I looked back at what they did, the amount of work and the amount of results that they got in cohort number one, and it was fascinating. They got big time ROI. They got big time changes. And I thought to myself, this is great. So if all of the women who decided to join for cohort number two had these outsized results, what were the three common traits between all of them?

18:14Because as I was interviewing for applications in cohort number two, I wanna say, I want more of these type of women. Three most common traits of the people who got big results in eight months and said like, heck yes, to join cohort number two, high competency. They were the best at what it is that they did. They know their stuff backwards and forwards. Number two, high agency. These are the type of women who take an idea and they don't need to know the how. They just trust that they will find themselves and their team understanding how to create the high, how to create the how. So it was high competency, high agency, and high collaboration.

18:48These women were the most collaborative in the room. They're like, who can I introduce you to? Who can I ask for? They came in with very specific questions. And so if you are wanting to scale your seven-figure business to eight and you're wondering why people are pacing at a different rate, high agency, high competency, and high collaboration. That brings us to the end of May, May 29th. I flew to San Francisco for a hosted lunch by John Levy. Now, if you notice right now, I couldn't get the words out. It's actually called an influencer lunch, but I really shy away from that type of verbiage. John has been doing these events for, I think, 15 years.

19:21So he was using the word influencer before it became like mainstream of what we consider to be an influencer. But at his lunch, he had something that was truly incredible. He had the head of innovation at Wells Fargo. He had the head of partnerships at Instagram. He had the person who created Amazon Prime and Amazon Kindle there at this event. I mean, he had Nobel laureates at this dinner. He had like directors and chairs at Berkeley and Stanford. It was such a wide range of people in the room. I interviewed John. I will link John's podcast in the show notes. The reason I am creating these episodes is I'm literally saying like the brick that I had laid with John in October of last year led to being at an event in May the following year.

20:11Prior to that, going to a dinner that he hosted in LA in September of last year. All of these things just keep on building upon each other. And these are long-term relationships that at the time I didn't know what they would turn into. Little could I realize that less than a year later, I would be sitting in San Francisco with these gorgeous views of the entire Bay with people who are so fascinating, quite literally changing the world. And so we went around the table. We ran around the room. There was about 24 of us there. And they were talking about all of their fancy titles and their fancy companies.

20:42And then I stand up and I'm like, the temptation is to be like, womp, womp, womp. Like no one's going to want to talk to me. And instead, I chose a different story. And I said, my name is Jasmine Starr. I'm the founder of a holding company and I empower entrepreneurs to scale from seven to eight figures. If you know a woman in your life who is very successful and wants to know how to scale, I am going to be the person that you sent her to. And then I sat down. I thought it was really great. And it made me really uncomfortable. But you want to know what? I got to keep on saying it until it vibrates from me in such a real authentic way.

21:12Shortly thereafter, we got in a car. We met actually with a couple tech members of our team who we've just had long-standing relationships with. We went to a really fantastic dinner. Then we went to Napa. We went to Napa because this was an opportunity for JD and I to spend three days together to talk about the future of the business. What are the things that are gonna be allowing to diminish stories? There are certain stories that serve us and there are certain stories that don't. And I have a tendency to look at stories and say, which one do I wanna own? Do I want to own that we're not moving fast enough?

21:41Do I want to own a story that it feels like inordinate risks? Do I want to own what it looks like for expansion and will that require me to work more when what I want to do is work strategically, not more hours. More hours doesn't yield better results. More strategy and cognizant thinking does. And so the stories that we chose in Napa, oh, we also went and wine tasted at Contessa. We stayed at a phenomenal resort. We spent time by the pool. And at the end of it, I decided to say, these are the stories that I choose. And these are stories that are going to serve me and set us up for success. So one of the things that I had to tell myself in San Francisco at that lunch was a mantra that I ended up saying the entire weekend.

22:22Listen, like I started off this story by saying, like who, like the family I come from, I'm the proud daughter of an immigrant, but being in rooms like that in San Francisco made me feel like an outsider. But here again, that's a story. So when I was in that room, I repeated to myself, you're in the right room. find ways to use your skills to help people and add value. I just kept on reminding myself, like you're in the right room, use your skills to help add value. And crazy enough, I use that same mantra as we went to the four seasons in Napa. Absolutely, absolutely could and should be at that hotel.

23:01So why is it that I have like this background narrative that like, should you be at this hotel? Like nobody else here is Brown. Like look at all these other cars. or it was this weird thing. And I kept on telling myself, you're in the right room. If you meet people, add value and step into who you've been called to be by choosing better stories. So the goal was to unplug. The goal was to get closer to our goals. And that was a really great start to June. So June was a lot more condensed. I was really spending a lot of time on Consistent 10K and didn't add any other things to my calendar. And June 11th, I flew to Nashville.