Rapid-Fire Q&A: Business, Growth, and Mindset Hacks

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0:32I can't wait to see you there. Welcome back to the Jasmine Star Show. Today, we're going to hit the ground running with a Q &A session. So I imagine you right now on this very short episode, you're either driving to the gym. Maybe you're at the gym. Maybe you're in line for pickup. Maybe you're making a quick lunch. This is a flash flyer Q &A so that we get connected and get that brain greased up and going and thinking about your business. So here are six questions from people who wanted to get into my brain and hopefully into yours. Let's dive in from GLC Divorce Coach. She asks, what's your work dream for five years from now?

1:08Now, I debated taking this question because this podcast shouldn't be about me, despite the name The Jazz and Star Show. I know. I rule. Okay, I get it. But I think it's important because even though I don't want to, this question made me the most uncomfortable. It's kind of like watching somebody in the middle of the arena. It's like somebody watching somebody in the batter's box or somebody at the three-point line and they are calling how many threes they're going to make in a row. This is like Babe Ruth pointing to the outfield saying where he's going to hit the home run. And this is like somebody in the arena who says, come at me, bull.

1:42I am a matador. Okay. So I'm a little bit embarrassed. I don't want, I don't want to call my shot just in case I miss it. But I think to myself, may I be so audacious to say the thing I'm going to do. And even if I don't hit it exactly, it ends up being better than I could have ever expected. So on that note, when I picture myself in 2030, oh my Lord, when I picture myself in 2030, the things that would absolutely positively light me up, it would be to be in service of the companies in our holding company. That what I am able to do by leveraging my personal brand, my insights, and my acumen is to serve the founders and operators of companies that we own outright or have a considerable amount of equity in.

2:26That my skillset will no longer be the person who has to be in front of a camera or to be the front facing of a business. It would be to empower other operators and presidents and CEOs within those businesses to do something that is even greater than them. One role of myself that I see of myself as CEO of Jasmine Star Brands would be to invest time in those operators and in those leaders. Another thing that I would really love to do is to make a content that helps people who cannot afford, invest, or even have the business size to be able to get the business insights that I currently have and share with the operators in our business.

3:04The last thing that I would love to do is to be able to use my platform, the platform that I'm currently building, to connect with other really incredible, freaking amazing people. If I can have these conversations, if I can get into their brains, and best part is that, I've said this before and I'll say it again, is that when I started my business, I made the promise to God that if I ever had a business that I would share everything I know. And so to be able to have a platform to invite other people on so that I would be able to get to know them, see how great they are, share their stories, and then other people get to learn from that, hot dang, that would be the dream.

3:35That would be the dream. And so that is why we are, you know, sometimes staying up late at night, working very early in the morning. This is why these are sacrifices that we're making today so that in 2030, I get to look back at this piece of content and say, I'm so thankful you did not give up. And I hope that you can stay the same. Stay the same and say the same. Do you see how I'm just going to roll with that? See, I'm like an editor's dream. Let's just roll with all of those mistakes. Okay, let's get into Yuxer by Sandra. She asked, what's the one thing really working on Instagram right now?

4:05I actually had this conversation with my co-content creator, and we were talking about what do we actually see? Because it's one thing to think something, but when we come into alignment and think in tandem with a creative team, and we all are seeing similar trends, then it makes me feel really confident coming out and saying this very thing. Number one, storytelling. Storytelling has never gone away, but let me tell you, it's back. And so I don't know if you remember, maybe like mid to late 2024, we were seeing a lot of B-roll, which means that like somebody was just on a screen, but they weren't talking and then you would have text appear over it.

4:38That was working for a while. And now we see it's just completely petered out. It's like people are actually responding very well to somebody just coming on camera, showing their face, sharing a story, talking about it inside, and it doesn't have to be over-the-top amazing, and it doesn't have to be produced. And so one thing to take into mind is storytelling and face-to-camera. Now, I know this makes a lot of people shudder. The idea of having to talk to a camera, like you're talking to Aunt Claude from Minnesota on FaceTime, and you're like, can you see my nose hairs? Man, I didn't realize my forehead was this big.

5:09I get it. All of that could be a story that you tell yourself, but at the end of the day, it absolutely builds trust. Punto final. If you are really trying to say what's going to work, talk to a camera, get used to it, find a message and give value. Now, in case you're like, no, that's too much. I don't want to do that. Well, we still think that carousels can perform very well. Here's why. There is a distilled amount of information broken up anywhere between three, eight, 10 slides. And as long as people are scrolling through, it is a clear indication to the algorithm that that person finds what you say powerful, insightful, educational, entertaining, or empowering.

5:46All the things that the algorithm loves. So if you are creating these carousels and you are seeing that people are saving them or they're sharing them, this is a great sign because it's kind of like what I call the sleeper, the sleeper post, is that not a lot of people will do it, but the more people who do it and are really good at having distilled pieces of information, they kind of take the lion's share of attention that's not reels or video driven. Let's go into another question. I really liked this one from Alex Steck Schult. Forgive me if I said your name wrong. The one thing that separates a successful business owner versus the one that never quite thrives.

6:23I would have probably before last year would be like, I don't know if I want to share this answer because I think it's just a me thing. This is just my personal belief. And then of course, the imposter syndrome or like, who am I to share this piece of information? It would have crept up. But I'm going to tell you straight out, I feel very confident with this answer. And I feel mostly confident with this answer is because I sat with other eight and nine figure business owners in a room in Austin, Texas. And boy, oh boy, did we spend a full day talking about this one thing. And it is the one thing that differentiates those who wildly succeed and those who don't.

6:55And that is, drum roll, hold on, your ideal client. Womp, womp, womp. Nobody wants to hear that, right? It's not sexy. Nobody really cares about doing the work that's going to make you stand out. So what differentiates the people that are really successful? They have a clearly defined market. They know who they're going after and they know why they're serving that demographic. Number two, they know their ideal client's desire or challenge implicitly. It is as if that business feels the pain and or desire from their ideal client in such a visceral way that everybody on the team is hellbent at coming up with a solution.

7:33And that leads me to point three, all driven around an ideal client, is how does your solution meet the desire or overcome the challenge of your ideal client? Three things. You want to know where the gangsters dwell? They know who they serve. They know what problem or challenge they solve. They know what desire they meet, and they know specifically how they do it with their solution, period, the end. And the better they get at the messaging around the problem and the better they get around the solution is when they hit scale. Simple, not easy. Fiona Shabizan asked how to deal with hostility in the workplace and how to address it as a manager.

8:12So I think I will be very honest and say that I'm going to have a hard time answering this question because I have a zero tolerance policy for hostility. Now, not to be confused, we are very much straight shooters. We embrace radical candor. We challenge each other on the team. In fact, I invite the team, tell me when I'm wrong. Tell me when you disagree. It's very common on the team for me to say, I will never be upset or disappointed if you tell me that you don't like my idea or you don't think it's going to work. What I will be very upset about is if you thought or suspected that something wouldn't work and you didn't tell me.

8:46I want to know your greatest fears and worries. Please, I will stand in front of you and take a sword to every idea I have because your swords make me better. And I would rather be stabbed in the front by a friend than stabbed in the back by an enemy. Okay. If there was ever hostility, however, we would put a clear kibosh to it ASAP. And so I don't deal with hostility. I face hostility. And if I was in this situation, I've always been guided and I have learned that facts over feelings. I can't go to somebody and say, I just think that you make us feel like you're very hostile in your communication.

9:21Or employees feel like you're very hostile with the way that you're speaking or writing. That doesn't do anything for anybody. I feel. Feelings are fleeting and they're not quantifiable. And furthermore, the only person who feels your feelings is you. So what we want to do is say facts. Number one, here is a clear example of how you communicated with somebody on Teams or Slack that has come across as hostile, not by one person, but by two. Here is an email communication in which it could be easily perceived as hostile. When you were in a meeting and we were in all hands, a couple people had mentioned that that answer dwelled right on the borderline of hostile.

10:01So just in case you are unsure, what we're going to do is we're going to go into a PIP. We're going to go into a performance improvement plan. And anytime you communicate this way in Slacker Teams, this way in email, or this way on meetings. We're going to go through and we're going to have a documentation. And I am here to help you overcome a hurdle that you might not be aware of. You might not know that this is how you come across. So my job as a team lead is to make sure that they have somebody who they can report to on improving how they communicate. But chances are, hostility is something that is very hard to break.

10:33And so I have zero tolerance for it. If you are a manager in the workplace, I would start collecting data and documenting everything. and if you have human resources on the team to get them involved as soon as possible. If you are the person who can let that person go, I would immediately address it with facts. I would put them on a 30-day PIP. If they had any violations in that 30-day and they were not willing to make changes or admit that they wanted to change, then I would say, I think their time had come. Very clear, but I would document everything. Okay, let's get into another question from a nutritious notebook, a.nutritious.notebook.

11:09How do you boost your upcoming launches in case the one that just closed didn't hit the goal? I just wanna tell you right now, you're not the first person to have a launch or promotion go sideways. Do they feel good? No, not at all. Do they make you question why you got into business in the first place? Yes, absolutely. Will it stop you from moving forward? Your answer better be no. Because you have not come this far to come this far. I understand that it is disappointing for you to have a goal and not hit it. I understand that all the work that you had put forth feels like it's a waste. I understand that it is disappointing, embarrassing, and the stories we tell ourself are really actually never mapping the stories that other people have or say about us, but they are real to us in that moment.

11:57Does it sound like I know what I'm talking about? Because I've been there. I've been there. So what I have done recently, which I know it sounds like, oh, I'm so awoke and elevated and I don't deal with these things. Like actually, I very much do deal with them. And I am very present to the idea that not everything will be a success. Isn't it crazy that as business owners, we like to think that everything we put forward will be a success. And we set goals, always assuming that what's next is better and bigger, right? And then when we don't hit them, we're like, wait, what happened? But we have to understand that there has never been an entrepreneur or a business in human history to only experience wins ever.

12:39So if this is the price we pay to be in business, may we understand this is normal and this is the cost of doing business. My question to you is, are you willing to pay rent? That's it. And so the answer is yes. I want to talk about this overcoming a promotion or a launch that didn't go well. I want to go over that in two ways. Number one, I first and foremost will, and I know it's very difficult, but this is 100 % hand to heaven what I do. I express gratitude because I believe that if it didn't happen the way that I wanted it, it's guiding me to the thing that I need to do. And what it is guiding me to will get me ultimately closer to the thing I want to build.

13:18Now, I know that that is not easy and it sounds ridiculous and very few people would actually ever embrace that. But I have to tell you, it's absolutely what I do because I'll give myself a full day. I will give myself a full day to be angry, throw myself a pity party, say like, oh, why? I get where I'll listen. I'll wear ash. I'll put ash on my head. I'll wear spurlap, sackcloth. I'll walk around. I'll raise an angry fist. Okay, fine, fine, fine. I give myself a day. And then the next day I ask myself, do you want to do this? Because yesterday was spilled milk. What are you going to do today?

13:52I'm thankful that that thing showed me either ways to get better, things I should stop doing or ways to redefine what it is I'm doing. That is 100 % it. That's the first thing. And the second thing is by how much did we miss the goal? Because on our team, we create good, better, best goals. And I think that has given us a lot of latitude to actually itemize like, okay, it wasn't the best launch, but it was good, right? So if we were to say that we win only win this, well, then that's like a pretty small window. But if we have like a wider spectrum, good, better, best. It empowers us to say, okay, it was good, maybe not what we wanted.

14:30Now, for some reason, we miss any one of those goals. We have to see by how much. Like if we miss that goal by a lot, then we have to find a different way to replace that revenue. If we had forecasted that revenue in the business and we were depending on it, we're going to have to find a way to replenish it. So it would be perhaps, maybe we launch this again and we take our learnings and we apply it to the next time so that we get better. Maybe it's to come up with an offer that actually bridges the gap to why people didn't buy the first offer. Maybe it's an opportunity to collaborate with another business owner who wants and needs what it is you know or have, and you pour into a pre-existing community, and then they empower you to go to their audience, sell or promote your offer and then make them an affiliate.

15:21There are ways for us to bridge the gap, but we have to start asking ourselves, what are my options? Because if you say, I missed my goal, what am I going to do now? Kind of like a dead end question. I missed my goal. I feel stupid. I feel tired. I'm frustrated. Okay, but that's dead end. If you were to say, how might I bridge the gap between the money I wanted and brought in? All of a sudden, you got to get very scrappy and very creative. it's possible. I've been there. I can't even tell you how many times that there have been programs or offerings that have come up on the back of us, not hitting our goal and being super bummed and so sad.

15:58And it felt so heavy. And I was pissed and I'm like, okay, we got to scramble. We got to do something and let's see how fast we can move and break things, how fast we can build something, how fast we can iterate. And all of a sudden we create an offer that was like hotcakes. The thing that we couldn't ever see was going to be the next biggest thing in the business. So not easy, not simple, not easy, but very much worth it. The last question I have, and I left it for the end because I really know, I really, despite my best efforts, I like to have a very diverse audience, but we're kicking it around a large demographic of women.

16:33And so I left this question until the end of it. So oftentimes I am asked, and so I'm going to leave this person's name off. Oftentimes I'm asked, like, how do you soften your edges? Like as a female in business, somebody had once said that I have, man, my mom listens to this podcast. I have to be very careful. Shall we say male genitals of steel, right? Like people are like, and that's not the energy that she wants to show up as. But I'm like, you're an entrepreneur. If people want to say that you go hard in the paint, they want to say you're rough around the edges. People are going to say whatever it is they want.

17:06It would only really bother you if you felt really misunderstood or misidentified. if somebody says man jasmine goes hard in the paint i would be like yes jasmine definitely speaks her mind yes jasmine can be intimidating when she walks into a room i mean i i don't know that's never my intention but if some people are intimidated i can maybe kind of sort of say that the difference between that is i can see it and i accept it and i don't think it means anything about me but if somebody hears that and then they feel a certain way it's because there's probably some bearing of truth or a way that they don't want to come across so this person had reached out and this person had asked a group of female entrepreneurs, including myself, how do I come across differently?

17:48How do I soften my steel male counterparts? Not gonna say the other word. Person replied, listen more, talk less, be gentle, be kind. Another person had said, let go of control, perfection in what other people think. Another person had said, wear more dresses, take yourself out on fancy dates and embrace that you hold a high standard of softness, masculinity, and pride. And then I had said, ask for help, say you're sorry, no lies or small girl stuff. Humble yourself. Humble yourself more than you think you need and admit when you're scared. So if you have ever felt like you're misunderstood or people are like, Like, man, this person's away.

18:40This person shows up. I have a tendency to believe that the more successful you become as a woman, you get into rooms where you're often the only woman or maybe one of two women. And so sometimes we can come across as posturing a certain way. And if that feels out of alignment, I hope that you take any one of these other amazing, incredible advice from female entrepreneurs and embrace both sides of that if that is how you want to be perceived. But I also want to say that I am first and foremost a builder. When I create content, I don't create it as a woman. I don't create it as a wife. I don't create it as a mother.

19:16I create it as a builder. Now, if other people want to say that I'm a mompreneur, a fempreneur, a girl boss, a lady hustler, that's fine. People can call me that. But how do I most identify? I identify as a builder building on my own terms. and the titles that other people put on me is not a reflection of me. It's a reflection of themselves. If I happen to rub somebody the wrong way, I am not rubbing themselves. I can't make anybody feel something. I can't make you feel something. You make yourself feel something. And so if I walk into a room and you perceive me as X, that is a reflection of you and not on me.

19:53So this is a reminder for any builder. Walk into a room and know who you are. But the advice of being humble, asking for help, showing your vulnerabilities, no lying, I don't think that that is a gender speculation or advice for a female or a male builder. It's advice for a builder, period. Thank you so much for watching and listening to The Jasmine Starr Show. This flashfire Q &A is made from a place of love and service. If it resonated with you, can you share it on Instagram or LinkedIn? I would love to personally respond and say thank you. Shout out. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Starr Show.