The Most Underrated Strengths to Have in Business (And How to Develop Them)

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0:38Welcome back to the Jasmine Starr Show. And for those of you who are longtime listeners, you can attest that, you know, I love talking about determination, perseverance, patience, resilience, and all of these other obvious strengths that make for really good business owners. But I'm gonna be switching it up today. I want to discuss some underrated qualities that make up some of the best entrepreneurs. Underrated qualities. Okay, as a side note, the only thing I love more than underrated qualities is being underrated. It is my most favorite thing ever, like in the whole world. I love when people underestimate me and then I can be like, kapow.

1:16I'm going to be like up in their face with an unexpected firework in your pocket moment. Let's go. Like, I love that. Still to this day, one of my all-time favorite underrated moments was years ago. Okay, so I'm spending Christmas Eve with my in-laws. Now, this is before I'm married, but I, you know, I'm still trying to play like the I'm a really great girlfriend game. Okay, so at the time we were dating and his family said, you should come over for Christmas celebrations. And so this is the first time I'm with his family and we do tamales. And not only do we make them, we eat them. His sisters have like a cookie decoration station.

1:48And then his mom got everybody and still to this day does this, gets everybody matching pajamas. And then we stay up till midnight on Christmas Eve playing games. And then at midnight is when we start opening gifts. But here's a weird thing, not a weird, I shouldn't say it's weird. It's actually, you know, when you talk about your in-laws, you should say it's weird. It was just, how shall I say this? New for me. So in my family, we celebrated Christmas on Christmas morning. That's when we opened gifts. But my husband's family comes from opening gifts on Christmas Eve slash Christmas morning. But they play games up until midnight.

2:19And then once the clock strikes midnight, they all give each other hugs. Now, I know that that is like a really sweet thing. But just imagine like we're surprised, like we're all playing games. and literally like the chime goes off. Ding, it's midnight. They're like, Merry Christmas. And then everybody one by one just starts hugging each other. And like, listen, I like hugs. I come from an affectionate family. It was just like the hug on demand. That was the craziest thing to me. I was like, oh, we just stand around and we give each other hugs. Okay, anyway, so welcome into my in-laws. It's something that we still do to this day and it will likely be something that we carry on to in our family.

2:55So yeah, one time weird. Now it's the norm, baby. It's the norm. It's like, it's how Latinos do it. We just gonna roll with it. So this one particular Christmas, my now sister-in-law, Claudia, she has her college friends come over. And one of them brought like kind of like an electronic game called Catch Phrase. It's the first time that we've ever played this. But let me tell you, these 21-year-olds had no idea the treasure trove of random information I have stuck in my noggin. Okay, like these college kids come out and be like, oh, we're going to school them. Nah, nah, nah. I will never forget going head to head with Claudia's friend.

3:24his name was Bobby, and then revealing at the very last second before the timer went off that I knew Eddie Vedder was the lead singer for Pearl Jam. Booyah! Never doubt. Never doubt me, baby. Underrate me. Underrate me. Let's go. Okay, so there is something I want to make sure that you understand is that all of these strengths, both underrated and not, like resilience, perseverance, patience, and the four we're going to cover today can be learned. Let me just be clear. I was never born a patient person. I was never born a determined person. These are learned qualities and these qualities can be developed and strengthened over time.

4:02And a lot of times we're going to be developing them through experiences, self-awareness, and mindset shifts. So let's start off by naming the four qualities that I believe are underrated in business owners. And then we're going to dive into each of them and start the process of developing each one. So I'll give them all now then we're going to break them down. Number one is tolerance for uncertainty. Number two is pattern recognition. Number three is the ability to lead with empathy. And number four is unconventional thinking. Now, if you heard those and you're like, oh girl, I don't want to listen to this.

4:31Like this is not the thing I want to listen to right now. No problem. But let me just tell you, be underrated. Walk into every room and have people look at you and then look away and carry on in a different conversation. Walk into rooms and not have to floss with name brands, but know that you expensive on the inside. Like have them overlook you until they announce that you're the keynote speaker. Okay, okay. So let's go over the first underrated skill, which is having the tolerance for uncertainty. We're gonna start here. The big guns, let's not shy away from what I really believe is a game changer.

5:06But what does this actually mean? It means having a tolerance for uncertainty in business is being able to make decisions and take action even when the outcome isn't clear. You know, like you have to make decisions the same way a lot of other business owners make them, which is shooting in the dark. Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with a group of entrepreneurs and we were talking about messaging and identifying your ideal client. And I was walking through our framework and they had said, well, how did you know? Like, how did you know that that was your dream client? And I realized, oh, it has never been said.

5:41When you start messaging for a new offer, for a new customer, you are shooting in the dark. We all make decisions in uncertainty, but we often don't talk about it. We think that we're the only people doing it and other people are not. No, but when you make more decisions quicker in more uncertainty, you get to the answer faster. Now, it's the ability to handle ambiguity. You know, like what's ambiguous? When things are not easily understood. It is the ability to handle ambiguity, adapt to changing situations, and make decisions even when you don't have all of the answers, which let's just be real, in business, do you ever have all of the answers?

6:15No. So if you know it's normal, like we're always gonna be shooting in the dark, especially in the beginning, there will always be a level of ambiguity. We will never have all of the answers. Well, okay, if we know that this is normal, how do we develop a tolerance for uncertainty? Here are four steps. Step number one is to develop a tolerance by simply acknowledging and accepting uncertainty. I know, it's like, you're like, wow, Jasmine, you're really deep. I might not be, but let me just tell you, simple gets it done. When we acknowledge and accept that uncertainty is a natural part of business and it's totally unavoidable.

6:47Okay, well then we can move on to other steps. Like in business, there could be months when you're uncertain if you're going to be able to pay yourself or not. But you must trust yourself enough to push past this and then take continuous action towards your vision. There have been plenty of time that I had been uncertain for a prolonged period of time. And the more I spoke to other business owners who were taking massive leaps in their business, they said, that's the norm. Okay, step number two for increasing your tolerance for uncertainty is to embrace complexity and ambiguity. Like instead of being angry, you could look at complexity as an opportunity for growth.

7:20In fact, if there is complexity, what we wanna do is we wanna avoid it like it's an obstacle. And I'm saying, let's look at complexity as an opportunity to learn and flex. And I understand this is a mindset shift. Like you just have to look at the same situation and choose to see it differently. Because when you start thinking about challenges as necessary opportunities to get bigger, better, stronger, faster, Well, when you look at it that way, you win. You're able to find joy in the unknown. And like, I know that sounds crazy, but when you find joy in the unknown, that makes you unstoppable.

7:49Like people can't get in your head. You're literally unmessable with when you just simply say, it's complex, I'm gonna figure it out. Step number three is to practice decision-making in uncertain scenarios. Now, I know it might seem a little crazy, a little bizarre, but practicing decision-making and critical thinking by putting yourself in a hypothetical business situation can help you feel confident and improve your overall decisions. Like I have to tell you right now that sometimes I listen to podcasts with Gary V and he's doing a coaching session with his 4Ds program. And sometimes I'll pause the podcast and I'll be like, Gary's gonna say this.

8:22Or if somebody asked me this, this is how I would answer. And then I press play so that I can hear his answer and I could see if I was like close or if I wasn't close or how did he see that was so different than how I saw it. And I'm like, oh, I'm intrigued. Or oftentimes when I'm watching YouTube videos, like still shout out that podcast guest Her name is Layla Hormozy. I just like the way she thinks because she thinks so opposite of me. I often think of marketing and sales and she thinks so strictly in operations and I think it's fascinating. And so sometimes I will pause some of her, like her YouTube interviews and I'm thinking, how did she apply this?

8:51How can I start flexing that muscle? And so I put myself in business situations to see how close my response is to measure how I'm tracking and thinking with others. Does that sound crazy? I mean, am I admitting this? Like, is this weird? It totally is weird. I know, but you wanna know what? Who cares? So here's an example of a hypothetical scenario for a product-based business. Imagine you own a small bakery, and then suddenly the supplier tells you how there's gonna be a delay in delivering a crucial ingredient. Like, okay, let's say, oh, shut out. It was gluten-free flour, right? So for those of you who don't know, I'm gluten-free.

9:23So this is crucial, okay? So you are a bakery owner. You're not gonna get your gluten-free flour. And then, of course, you have a large order to fulfill for a local event where half of the order needed gluten-free cupcakes. Now you have to decide whether to buy the ingredient from a more expensive supplier, which would make your profit little to nothing, or risk disappointing the customer. What do you do? I know, it seems silly, but this scenario helps you practice quick decision-making by weighing immediate costs against potential long-term gains. I play this in my mind all the time. Why? Is doing mental reps.

9:59I really believe that. That's crazy. It's like, what do you do for fun? Imagined business scenarios. Okay, now let's do a hypothetical scenario for a service-based business. You're a solopreneur of a graphic design business, and you've taken on two high-paying clients with tight deadlines that overlap. Both clients are equally as important to you, and like, let's be real, you need the money, but you're uncertain if you can meet both deadlines without compromising the quality of work. You have to decide whether to negotiate new timelines with one of the clients, and then you could potentially risk the quality of both projects or hire a contractor to meet the both deadlines, which would take time, and that isn't something that you necessarily have, and it could be hefty and an unpredictable cost, what do you do?

10:39This scenario helps you practice making decisions about client prioritization, managing cashflow, and effective client communication. Okay, so before we move to the fourth step in developing a tolerance for uncertainty, let's review. Remember, we're still in section one of underrated qualities that are so banger for being an entrepreneur. Step one is to acknowledge and accept uncertainty. Step two is to embrace complexity and ambiguity. and step three is to practice decision-making in uncertain scenarios. Now, the fourth and final step is to measure comfort with uncertainty. Now, measuring comfort, I know, it's like so esoteric.

11:14It's not exactly easy. It's not like analytics or numbers that you can plug into a chart and say, I have improved my comfort by 33%. No, like you have to get real with yourself and how you feel. So how do you do this? Start by taking about, I don't know, 10 minutes each evening to write down your feelings about the uncertainties you faced that day. And then after you reflect, write on a scale of one to 10 how uncomfortable you felt in each situation. This practice will also help you be intentional and more self-aware how you face uncomfortable situations because you're able to look back at patterns of uncertainty that you now feel, oh, that situation, I proved how certain I could be in uncertain situations.

11:55And then you could say, how did I make that through? And then the best part is this journal will be proof. Like come back to this journal in a year and it's proof that you can be uncertain and still find a way through. So I don't come on the podcast and be like, let's pontificate or let's make up scenarios. At the time of this recording earlier today, I had a really incredible meeting with an opportunity. Now this opportunity is a rare opportunity. It is an opportunity and I'm going to leave it pretty ambiguous for now until we fully locked in what it could be. But it's the first time that I have pitched partnering with a different subscription company to create a resource.

12:33More on that soon. Not right now. But because this is such a huge opportunity, last night, I literally laid down the framework. We had a 30-minute meeting and I needed to guarantee that at least 25 of that 30 minutes was going to be dedicated on selling them on the vision and pitching them what we wanted to do. So then what I did is I said, I have 25 minutes. Well, I needed to leave around three minutes for introductions and, you know, like salutations. It's the first time we've ever been meeting via video. And so then I said, I have five minutes to pitch. A total of eight minutes of 30 was going to be not spent optimizing for the actual pitch.

13:11I needed five minutes to lay a framework. Do you think I was going to leave that time just to be like, oh, I just come to me in the moment. Maybe if you're good and confident, I don't know, y 'all, I needed some practice. So what I did was I literally laid out. if I didn't know what I was being pitched, what would I need to see? What would I need to understand? What miracle must I believe in? And when I say miracle, I always look at this from like a business perspective. What must I believe to be true? Even in the impossibility of it, I need to believe that this is true in order for me to be sold on this solution.

13:41And so I said, I need to remove all questions. I need to add clarity. I need to do a walkthrough of a value add. I need to cast the vision and I need to connect the dots before we even get to the pitch. And so I had everything set up in my mind. I just wrote down notes. And so then 10 minutes before the call today, I went through, I queued up all of my tabs in Chrome to walk through demos, examples, vision casting of what we would need from a user perspective. And at the end of the call, now JD was on the other side of the door. He was with Luna. So my office is adjacent to our bedroom. And so he took Luna into the bedroom.

14:16We shut my office doors. And so he had his ear pressed against the door. And then right when we got off Zoom, he opened the door. He like came in, high-fived me. and it wasn't like an after school special high five. You know, it was cool. Like he was cool, it was cool. He was just like, got it. Like, good job, good job. And so that feels really good. But what did I do yesterday? I just wrote down how I was feeling, but it's not enough for me to sit in the uncertainty. I actually had to say, this is gonna be your best attempt. And if they say no, hey, at least I know I planned and I put my best foot forward.

14:46Okay, so I know that was a lot, but I want you to be able to build the business of your dreams. And I know for a fact that building tolerance for uncertainty, even though it's underrated, is going to be really, really good in your favor. Now, that was just the first one of four. Y 'all buckle up. We out here breaking things down with frameworks, giving you tools, getting you to action. So the first underrated strength was building your tolerance for uncertainty. Now let's move on to the second underrated strength. And that, I believe, is pattern recognition. Y 'all, I am telling you. It's like, you know, in like that scene, that movie, it was like a very popular, I see dead people.

15:22I don't see dead people. Thank God. Shout out. I want to say, it's like, I see patterns. And because I could see a pattern, I know how to create predictive behaviors in our business. Okay. So what does this actually mean in business? And like, why is this important? Pattern recognition is the ability to recognize recurring trends, data, organizational situations, consumer behavior. Oh, I love this one too, from an operational perspective. It's like when I do interviews, because I've done so many interviews for team members, I can recognize patterns and say, oh, this other team member who exhibits these qualities interviewed the same way.

15:54I think I'm going to be closer in this interview to hiring somebody who's already been proven like net quality on our team. So patterns. And it helps you make informed decisions to identify possibilities for growth. And I just want to take a second because it's awareness. By being aware and recognizing these patterns, you can develop systems and you can optimize your operations. So here's an example of how pattern recognition can improve the business of our small business bakery. You know, our small bakery owner? Okay, great. See, you know, I love me some examples. I love me some product-based.

16:26I love me some service-based. I really wanna start extending these examples so you could see how underrated patterns can serve people in different ways. So let's just say this bakery owner, She's observing a consistent pattern of increased customer traffic during both Saturday and Sunday mornings, and then a decline in weekend nights, which is unexpected in the food industry, right? Like she's a bakery. She's like, why is it like low key boring on weekend nights when other places are popping? But by recognizing this pattern, and then she was doing a little bit of analyzing, she realizes that the church across the street holds a Saturday Bible study along with their regular Sunday morning services in the morning.

17:03And with this pattern, she decides, okay, I'm going to adjust my opening hours. So she's going to start opening her hours 6 a.m. before those services because she will be the only option for breakfast and coffee, open that early on a weekend. Number two, her customers are likely to take their goodies and coffees to church. You know, I mean, some churches don't allow coffee. I mean, come on, do you not love God? Like, I need some caffeine. And then three, she can be more efficient for the normal crowd if they're not all popping in after church all at the same time. all because she noticed a pattern and took time to analyze and make adjustments.

17:38So let's go through an example and we're gonna do this again with that graphic designer, that solopreneur we talked about. Okay, our design solopreneur notices a pattern in his project requests. He consistently receives a crazy amount of requests for logo designs in the first quarter of the year. Huh, so recognizing this pattern, he prepares a limited time offer that upsells logos into a whole new brand identity package. By bundling his services, He, number one, increases his revenue from each client. Number two, provides businesses with comprehensive brand refresh that's gonna improve their marketing efforts.

18:11And three, gets more of his services, and not just logos, known and in front of more potential clients. Now, okay, cool, like bakery owner, agency owner. You might be thinking, okay, all that sounds great. More sales, more clients, happier clients, more efficient business, but how do I get better at recognizing patterns? Good question. Okay, I have two tips for you. Tip number one to improving pattern recognition is to get curious. I love asking why. As a child, I would ask my mom why. And when you ask your mom why, I thought I was like precocious and she sure is all good. I thought I was annoying, but it was a question that I can ask after an answer.

18:50So why is the sky blue? My mom would say, oh, because God made it that way. But why? Because it's God. Okay, but why did God, you know what I'm saying? It's like, come on, girl, come on. Okay, get curious about why. things are going the way that they are. Why are you busier during quarter one? Why are gluten-free cookies selling out by your north location by noon? Why are your team members frustrated when it comes to collaborative projects? When you ask questions, you start to uncover patterns. Tip number two is to regularly review data and information. Okay, this sounds boring. And I used to hate data.

19:23Now I love it. Give me some numbers and I will project. I love some numbers, like things like sales, customer feedback, anything that's analytical. I want you to look for recurring themes or trends in that information. And I also want to encourage you to join a community of business owners who are in similar seasons or industries, because then you could share observations and gain new perspectives. I love being part of groups or masterminds that they're maybe like a year or two ahead of mine, or maybe they have like a younger business, but it's a bigger business. So I get to almost use it as a forecasting mechanism of what is coming my way.

19:55Okay, now let's move on to the third underrated strength to have as a business owner, which is the ability to lead with empathy. First off, leading with empathy does not mean that you have to be a pushover, a people pleaser, give away free products or services, get everybody to like you. Not at all. Leading with empathy means that you're truly understanding and caring about the people that you work with. It creates positive team culture and you want everybody to feel valued. And like the best part, when you are like leading with empathy, you're motivating people. Empathy can increase your sales.

20:25Being empathetic can connect you with your ideal client on a personal level. You could address their personal needs. Leading with empathy builds trust. It also helps them realize that you're about building real relationships, not just closing deals. Okay, so I know that sounds all warm and fuzzy, and I know that it sounds like the back of a Hallmark card. Or the back of a Hallmark card? No, that's just the price. The middle of a Hallmark card. It sounds like the Hallmark card when you open it. Okay, let's go. I'm gonna get somebody who's like, so the back of a Hallmark card is just the trademark.

20:52Okay. Okay. Let's get a real example. Let's use our baker as an example of how we can improve internally with her team when she's leading with empathy. Okay. Imagine the owner of the small bakery that we've been trying to refer to. Okay. She notices that one of her employees, who's typically earlier, right on time, has been consistently late and less energetic. Concerned about the potential impact on the team and the customer service, the owner decides to have a one-on-one conversation. Now, during that conversation, the employee reveals that car troubles have left her family. Now her family, there's five of them and they only have one car now, which has been causing stress.

21:24And she's still navigating like car pulling schedules and figuring it out with her partner and the owner. Well, the owner is being empathetic and asks her, Hey, what can I do to make this transition easier for you and your family? After the conversation, they come up with a solution that the employee can focus on inventory, ordering and prep work, which is flexible hours instead of running the cash register, which is only during open operating hours. And that shift, you know, if you're working the cash register, do not be late. Okay. So you might be thinking, how does this form of empathy improve the organization and not just the employee?

21:55One, the company doesn't lose a long-term employee over a short-term problem. Number two, the employee will naturally feel the desire to reciprocate simply by doing the best job she can because, hey, her job and then her owner expressing appreciation like that meant something to her. And three, the owner feels a sense of ease knowing that she helps somebody she cares about without without sacrificing the effectiveness of the operations. Okay, so now, you know, if you've been using these two examples, one of the bakery owner, now let's do an example of how leading with empathy can improve your sales.