The Letter I Wrote to My Younger Self (And Why It Changed Everything)

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0:32I can't wait to see you there. If you could go back and tell yourself something, what would you say? And if you could go back and tell yourself something, how old would you be? I want you to hold that age of yourself and I want you to start thinking about some of the things that you would go back to tell your former self. So I am a part of an executive group coaching program. In fact, the way that they call it is a private network for high growth founders and it's called Hampton. I have been a part of a cohort. There's about eight of us for three years, and it's been one of the best things I've done in my business.

1:07On a recent call, our facilitator, his name is Casey, he asked us to do something different. He said, in preparation of our next call, I want you to write a letter to your former self. Tell me what you would say. Now, in all of the three years that we've been meeting together, it's never been this, like warm and fuzzy or sentimental, what some people might call sentimental. It's all been like strategy and what are we doing and how are we innovating? So this is a big change for me to see my fellow cohort members in a totally new light. Now, these are all eight and nine figure entrepreneurs who I look back and I'm just amazed.

1:45When I look at my cohort, it makes me very happy to say I am the dumbest person in the room, which means I'm in the right room. They are inspiring and they're powerful. And these are the types of people that you read in business magazines doing really incredible things. In my mind, these people are every definition of mind-blowing. So it was a very delightful surprise to hear them read letters to their younger selves. They were beautiful. They were sometimes heartbreaking, but they were mostly inspiring. Now, when one of the members read a letter to himself, another member by the name of James had said this.

2:24I'll throw something out there. Like one thing I always love talking to other entrepreneurs about is like, what gives you your chip, you know, like, why are you doing this? Like, this is not an easy life for the most part. And I feel like I heard a deal explaining the moment he got his chip. And I think that like, it's always such a cool thing to hear someone share that. Cause it's, it's probably been a huge part of your life's path for the last, however many years. And so I think the other thing, I always think about with this stuff is like being thankful for the chip. And so like, like even writing this letter, I was thinking like, you know, what would you say to yourself to like, I'm happy with my life ended up like, you wouldn't want to change this moment where you're at.

3:09Right. Like, but you know, can you imagine a life that got you here without that chip being so painful? And, you know, I just thought about that moment of seeing your mom and that moment. I mean, it would feel so helpless and terrible, especially as a teenager. But, uh, you know, I'm always thinking about this, like the chip has to hurt for it to work. And, you know, so like, in some sense, you're thankful for the pain. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's always just makes me think really deeply about like, you know, what led you here? What led me here? Why are we all here? So it's a, it's a beautiful, it's a pain you're thankful for.

3:45So it's, it's fun to hear about well absolutely that one james that that's yeah that's great could i ask jasmine star she always has a unique angle something that i would not have thought of out of that that's always like oh that's awesome so you got one or not to put you on the spot but no uh for for a deal specifically it just uh it just hit like i like hearing that our humanity it just draws us closer together and has a deeper appreciation for the climb. And so I just have a much deeper appreciation, a deeper respect for Adil and what he's built. And like, in reference to what James says, that we all have a chip.

4:27And I'm like, I have a basket of chips. Somebody make up some Waka Mola. Like it all hurt. It all hurt. I will just, I will be out here tossing chips. So I'm like that. And, and it, you know, you said it has to hurt. And I was like, if that ain't the truth. Good. Thank you. Thanks, Adil. No, thanks, guys. Appreciate you. When I wrote my letter, I thought that I was just going to share it with the guys in my cohort. I was literally just writing a letter to myself that I was going to share it with them. But when one of the members by the name of JT had said, Jasmine, this letter made me see you in a different light.

5:04I saw a new side of you. He's like, oftentimes when I hear you talk about your journey. It's very put together. It's packaged. It's branded. He's like, but this, this just felt entirely different. And so I asked them if it was cool, if I could share that letter here with you and with their permission, they said, and I'm not sharing any of their letters. I'm just going to share my own. And I feel open and it makes me feel very vulnerable to put it out in this capacity, but I've always been committed to documenting the journey. And so you guys are going to be able to hear why I'm creating this podcast.

5:39I create this podcast to look back and tell myself the truth of the journey. There's something called Solomon's Paradox. I don't know if you've ever experienced that you have the ability oftentimes to give friends or peers really great advice, but when it comes to giving yourself advice, sometimes you're a little bit stuck. Sometimes you're just like, I don't even know what I would say. Well, Solomon's paradox is the ability. Now, if you're not familiar, it's a biblical character. King Solomon was known for his wisdom and people would travel lands and years to get wisdom from King Solomon. But like his life was completely speckled with a lot of missteps and things that a wise person purportedly wouldn't do, right?

6:18So Solomon's paradox means we can give advice better than we could take it ourselves. But oftentimes we can give ourselves advice to our younger self because we look at that as a different version of ourselves. And so being able to write this letter was just the truth of the journey. And so because I want to share the truth of the journey, I'm going to be open and vulnerable and share my letter right about now. All right, let's keep going. Could we have a reading from the book of Jasmine? Is that an option or would you? I had a feeling you were going to call on. I just did. Because you guys already know in the back of my mind, I reverse engineered.

6:54I was like, There's no way. If each of us have minutes, we were running out of time. And I have to actually leave the call like 15 minutes early. So I was like, girl, you're good. And then I knew Casey was in call on me. I was born at night, but not last night. You know that. Okay. So, you know, studies prove that women will, on average, use about three words to a guy's every one. So I'm probably 3X of a deal. I hate to break it. I'm so sorry, guys. So sorry. I probably did this thing wrong. Okay. I wrote a letter to my 18-year-old self, but specifically at the start of my senior year. Okay. Dear Jasmine, you're receiving this letter from your future self.

7:34Before you freak out and page your boyfriend that something crazy is happening on his beeper, 911-143, let me get to the main point. The future is amazing. So much better than you can imagine. Right now, it's the start of your senior year, and you believe you'll be attending UCLA Law School to major in English. The bad news is you bomb your SAT and you don't even try applying. You end up getting an academic scholarship to Whittier College and major in business. You're brokenhearted, but the highlight is that you're still texting your boyfriend in college because you decided to date long distance.

8:04You both talk every night for two years from a pay phone outside of your dorms. In a beautiful turn of events, you get a waitressing job at a barbecue restaurant while waiting to get accepted to law school. You tank the LSAD, but this time apply to only top 15 law schools. hoping your entrance essay and 4.0 GPA will a miracle. Berkeley, UVA, USC all say yes, but when UCLA offers a full-ride scholarship, it feels like a full-tiple moment. You're officially a Bruin, and your boyfriend moves you into your brand-new apartment on Veteran Avenue, just two blocks from the Ballard sign. At this moment, you'll think you've made it.

8:39A few months later, you'll get the news that mom had a relapse of brain cancer. You'll lose your appetite. You'll stop sleeping, and you'll find yourself running eight miles every day at 4 a.m. You dread school. You find yourself a loner in the law library and you struggle to make friends. You'll be diagnosed with depression at 24 years old. After mom's brain surgery on New Year's Eve, you decide to quit law school and move home to be with her. Your high school sweetheart proposes, yes, you marry him. Everybody is shocked that such a remarkable human is volunteering to spend his life with you.

9:10And mom and dad walk you down the aisle on a beach in Hawaii. When it's time to return to UCLA to get your scholarship, you ask your husband if it would be crazy to wait a year to see if you could try to become a photographer instead. You don't even own a camera. Two months later, you unwrap a Christmas gift from your husband, that brand new camera. Two years later, you ask him to quit his job and join you. Two years after that, you're named one of the top photographers in the world. You start a blog. Your posts go viral. You begin traveling the world to shoot and speak about photography. You're then hired by large photography companies to consult on their branding and marketing.

9:40You'll begin to build an online store and sell your digital resources for photographers and print a magazine of your own. You'll soon expand to create courses, not just for photographers, but for business owners to help them build their brands and their business. Around this time, the business gets so big, you realize it's time to hire a CFO to manage the streams of revenue. You'll start a membership in 2017, and you hope that 500 people join. In the first five days, 2 ,444 people joined. In 2021, after four years of expansion, knowing you need more tech infrastructure, you hire a CTO and build a SaaS platform to integrate with every social platform so business owners can create and plan their marketing.

10:16In 2023, you decide to create a holding company. You either outright own or have equity in a series of companies all under the umbrella company. You don't know what you're doing, but the opportunities that come your way blow your mind. On the days that you're tempted to question or doubt your big, crazy vision, you remind yourself that at every step along the way, you didn't know what you were doing, but you figured it out. And it's so much better than you can imagine. Along the way, you fell more in love with your husband. You adopted a beautiful, magical, incredible daughter. and moms survive brain cancer.

10:45And the best part is even though it's been the hardest thing you've ever done, building this has been breathtaking and it's made you happy. To be honest, I want to tell you to apply to UCLA for undergrad, to finish law school, to take more risks, to go on more vacations, to dance until the morning sunrise. I want to tell you to get those investors, to double down on tech, to demand to be in those rooms, to take strategic debt, to make bigger bets on yourself. But I won't. I won't do any of that. This future life is so much bigger than you allowed yourself to dream. And it happened as it should.

11:16And it took as long as it needed. And everything is preparing you for the next big move. So right now, as you begin your senior year, don't be so hard on yourself. Live more in the present moment and trust that everything is working out for you. I'm so proud of you. Wow. Whoa, good turn. That was incredible. That was really incredible. She understood the assignment. That's fantastic. Jasmine, why did you choose that point to write the letter to yourself? I was really, really, really hard on myself in high school, but specifically my senior year. I kind of just felt like I had failed. I'm just, I'm not a standardized test taker.

12:01I never have been. And I was sad, like when you're 18, you just think your life's over when your plans, you know, don't go as planned. And I think that I kind of carried, I think that was probably one of the first chips on my shoulder is just, you know, going to a school. I didn't want to, struggling to be there. I tried transferring out and then doors closed, doors closed. And so then you just knew you had to be there for reasons you didn't quite understand. And so I think I needed to tell myself I was going to be okay. Yeah, I heard and I heard how you were giving your younger self room to to grow into the life that the advice you wanted to share, you won't because that's an important factor in what it can be and what it will be.

12:47So I thought that was insightful. It's pretty cool. jasmine do you um do you ever think about if you were back into your your 18 year old shoes and you're looking at where you are now and reflect on the things that maybe moved much faster than you would expected and things moved a lot slower than you would expected i'm curious i'm curious to hear like what some of those things are for you my my photography career took off like a rocket ship. I didn't even, I didn't even know what was happening. And so I thought, well, that's the way most things work, which boy, was I wrong. And then I think like the second rocket ship moment was, um, social curator.

13:29It just, it just, it just was so much bigger. It was so much bigger than I could ever imagine. It took off so quickly. And I think part of like the, the quick offtake really, uh, impacted how much we can grow and how we could sustain. And, you know, not all, not all rocket ship growth is good growth. Got my ass handed to me. And that's good too. Another chip. Like I said, gentlemen, I'm waking guacamole. Like I can go on and tell you all the chips, all the chips. What went slower than you expected? What was slower? I think what has been the slowest, hands down, has been the entire journey of me being in Hampton.

14:08It has been the slowest, most arduous three years of my professional career. And I think, you know, I am paid really well to see around corners. People hire me to do strategy. And I think it's been to be completely candid, so hard not to be able to see around my own corners in my own strategy. And I think that what's taken me the longest is trying to figure out like what a holding company looks like, you know how we're getting there there's that balance between long term and uh current cash flow what are the bets that we make how to be strategic all that stuff it's been really slow thank you very much for sharing that was awesome and then i heard one no surprises that you are the best at telling the narrative of your life compared to anybody i think in hampton probably like it's that was no shock to me i was like yeah this is killer like you know your chips like you said and then but i also thought even though i've heard whether it's your podcast or your social or here i also heard vulnerability as like like an undertone you know like sometimes it's like you're so good at it that you're like boom that that's the like that these are the words I'm going to use in the sentence because I know it lands.

15:29But like on this one, I heard like that vulnerability perspective. And I wonder if it's just because you're writing to yourself instead of, you know, an audience or, but I've really appreciated that extra level of vulnerability. Thank you. Thank you. And you're right. You're right. Like, I just felt like I'm softer, nicer with myself by myself. I think I'm much harder with myself publicly. I don't know much of the Jasmine star story. I'm pretty new here still, but I heard a lot of reassurance, you know, and I think kind of like giving yourself strength. I'm curious if looking back, you feel like you needed that or if that was something that you had developed or, you know, I'm curious why you wanted to say that to yourself.

16:12You're so thoughtful that the last comment that you had made towards the deal, I thought it was so extraordinarily thoughtful. And I feel like this is a very thoughtful question. And it's crazy. I wrote the letter to my former self, but the person who needs to hear it is my present self. I think that in 13 years, I'm going to write a letter back to myself and give myself the same advice I gave to my 18 year old self. Like, don't be so hard on yourself. I'm going to cry. Oh, no, I'm not. We're good. Don't be so hard on yourself. live more in the present and trust that everything's working out for you.

16:45I'm going to say the same thing. And so I was like, just last night, kiss baby girl's head. And I was like, man, this is it. Like, this is it. This is it. I'm going to wish for the day to come back to this day. And so I'm just like, live now. Like, this is it. This is as good as it gets. Good answer. Yeah, it's interesting. I think you said like you would want to write the same letter to yourself 13 years later. Like you said, you were hard on yourself because you did bad on standardized tests. In many ways, actually, it was so good for you that you did bad on those tests. Right. And you've done well.

17:23You've gone to law school. And maybe you've been, you know, some mid-market lawyer somewhere. Instead of all the stuff you've done. Mid-market? Anar. Anar. Mid-market? Hunter. Whatever. I'm just saying, fine. Imagine yourself being a partner at a law firm. like is that any better you know like i think it's from me right when i say like i am really good at standardized tests like i ace all my tests and then i go do some meaningless job for for a paycheck instead of like life forcing you to do something you should be actually doing instead of what kind of the society pushes you into doing because you know that's a standardized test pushes you it's not not really a paradox but it's not the right term but But isn't it interesting how most of our lives we wouldn't change a thing?

18:16Look at how much confidence that is and that you are where you're supposed to be, or at least, I guess, you know, or you don't know any better. And so you wouldn't change a thing. But it is an interesting study to say, well, where would I be differently? Would I be better and worse? And how do I judge what's better and worse? There really is no such thing. It is I am what I am. It is what it is. And so there are, in theory, there are no wrong decisions. Some in retrospect, that's not a practicality, but from a philosophy perspective, there are no wrong life decisions. You get where you're supposed to go, if you want to call that.

18:49And if you want to call that faith or belief or random theory. yeah by the way i'd like to see a stat of all of the founders and entrepreneurs and and what their test scores were i i would i would guess i would guess that actually they lie on the lower end and and and i i'm the same way i was never a good test taker and and that forced me to compensate in other ways which i think improved me it and pushed me harder in other ways maybe you know be a better communicator, a better designer. I worked harder, all those things. But yeah, it's an interesting data point. Real quick, gentlemen, if it's okay.

19:30And if not, just, just DM me. One of the things he had said was that he felt like a different level of vulnerability. And I, that rang true with a capital T. Do you think that I can clip out my letter and then use it as part of a podcast in the future? But you guys, your voices might be in the back, but just, just my park nobody else is nobody else is okay but if not i'm very much open to it so just dm me on slack or text me okay cool thank you guys thank you i feel warm and fuzzy you guys are the best thank you jasmine thank you i always i'm always worried sometimes if you're going to go allow yourself to be that open to us and so i'm really was pleased to see that you did so that's great Well, in a room full of gentlemen, I cannot resist.

20:13So thank you. Thank you. Before we go on any further, I want to say Casey, James, Adil, JT, Lev, Remy, Anar, and Blake. Thank you, friends. Gracias, amigos. Like truly for creating this space for three years and seeing me on this journey. And now it's time for me to say thank you to you. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show. Thank you for sharing these episodes. It is a small group of crazy entrepreneurs who somehow find themselves listening to it and watching it. You're that crazy cohort. It's just a small group of us doing some really incredible things. And most days they don't feel incredible.

20:57But one day when we're 85, looking back at this version of us today, we're going to say, wow, job well done. Like you did what you thought was impossible. And so on this day, I hope that you think of yourself at 85 years old and with deep pride and appreciation for the hustle and for the journey and for the joy and for the success and for the failures and for the lessons and for the ups and for the downs, you say, take it easy on yourself. You're doing a great job. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jazz and Star Show.