The One Skill That Makes Entrepreneurs Unstoppable

0:00Every time you choose ownership over blame and you choose action over waiting and you accept full responsibility of everything that happens because you're in control of what you do next, boom, you strengthen your self-agency. Do you have a person in your life that no matter what happens and no matter if they have the right experience or even if they're qualified to help, is the person you believe would get you out of any scenario? This is the type of person who doesn't need to have all the information, but they're going to figure it out. This is the type of person who like, even if they don't have all the money, they're gonna find a way to barter.

0:33This is the type of person who doesn't take no for an answer, but finds a healthy way to make both parties satisfied. Okay, now place that person right now, like in the forefront of your mind. Think about this person, because what I'm about to do in this episode is explain and describe how this quality is what makes somebody a standout business owner. So all of the most incredible entrepreneurs, people who I admire and I know personally, They contain this one quality, and it's a word that you may or may not be familiar with. It's called agency. The formal definition of agency is a person's capacity to act independently, make their own choices, and exert power over their environment.

1:12It basically defines your ability to control your own destiny rather than being completely shaped by external forces. Okay, so that is like the technical and proper fancy definition. I love it. But I'm a simple girl. I simply define agency as make it happen. Like there are people who, despite whatever they don't have or they don't know or they don't normally do, they'll just make it happen. That's it, they'll make it happen, people. And these people aren't necessarily outliers or they're particularly brilliant or somehow they're like gifted. They're just people who are unrelenting in their desire to make it happen.

1:48I believe agency is a thing that makes business owners successful. Like literally, quite literally, you need agency to survive building a business. You must believe that you can make it happen. You don't have enough leads? Make it happen to get those leads. Don't have enough sales? Make it happen to get those sales. Your website crashed unexpectedly? Make it happen to find another way to direct that traffic. Everything that can go wrong in business, well, that's normal. But what makes good businesses survive is an entrepreneur's willingness to find a way to make it happen. period the end. There are two people that I think of when it comes to agency, and they inspire me for two totally different reasons, but it's no surprise that their business is thriving in the way that it is.

2:32So here again, I want to be very clear. Their businesses are thriving not because they're special, but simply because they're high agency. Now, one of the highest agency people I know is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Now, you might know her as one of the top health podcasters, or maybe you've seen her speaking internationally on keynote stages, or maybe you're one of her millions and millions of followers on social media. I was introduced to Dr. Gabrielle by a mutual friend, and we were at this Entrepreneur Mastermind. And so from our very first conversation, Dr. Gabrielle struck me as a person who is intently listening to every single word, and she's paying attention to every detail.

3:10Like she's a master sushi chef placing every single grain of rice. That's how she's listening to you. So two days into the event, I had explained that for most of my life, I had been dealing with stomach issues. For over a decade, I had visited endless specialists. I had taken every test. I had tried every diet. I had done every diagnostic venture. Okay. After all of those things, I ended up explaining to Dr. Gabrielle that I just made peace. I had made peace with my pain and that somehow I just relented to the idea that I was going to live in permanent discomfort for the rest of my life. I literally told her that.

3:44She listened, and then she asked me a very simple question. Why? Why are you giving up? And then I start to cry, and I said, I have done everything I know how to do, and doctors still don't have answers. Dr. Gabrielle is a licensed physician, and she can practice in most, maybe all the states. If not all the states, then most. She can practice in most states in the United States. And she's also a concierge doctor, and she asked if I would allow her to join my journey to find answers for my health issues. Now, for the sake of her privacy and the fact that you probably don't want to hear about my gut issues, I'm going to fast forward to the end result.

4:20Not only did she comb through hundreds and hundreds of pages of insurance documents to see which physicians would cover specific procedures, but she made a detailed list of what I needed to say in order to find the right doctor. And then in a crazy turn of events, I met a doctor for an entirely different part of my body that Dr. Gabrielle expected was impacting my gut. turns out it was precisely what was affecting my stomach. I wasn't having stomach issues. It was something else in my body that was affecting and pressuring against my stomach and my intestines. So at one point when we thought we hit like the final roadblock and I was like, this is it.

4:57We can't get any answers. She offered to get on a plane and fly with me to New York City to meet with a specialist. Okay. So thankfully we didn't have to go down that route, but the fact that she simply would refuse to take no or sit at a dead end was downright remarkable. She has such high agency that she promised me we're going to find a reason for my pain. And even if there wasn't a treatment, at least we would know precisely what was happening. She modeled for me a level of agency that I had never seen or experienced in my life. So it's no reason why she's one of the most in-demand concierge doctor and has like millions and millions of people who trust her.

5:36She is, without a shadow of a doubt, a make it happen person. She is the epitome of having agency. She has an eight-figure business as a result of her agency. So how do you know or assess how much self-agency you have? So I want to break it down in three ways because I want you, as you're building your business, to either expand your agency or become very aware of it so you know how to grow. So three ways to know that you have self-agency. Number one is ownership. Number two is action. And number three is responsibility. So what we're going to do is we're going to break this down one by one. First up is ownership.

6:12When something isn't working in my business, what's my first instinct? I'm going to ask you that question. When something's not working, are you asking yourself, hey, what's not working? Does it immediately focus on outside factors? Like, oh, the algorithm's changing or the economy's bad or people aren't buying or my team is dropping the ball? Or is your first instinct to ask yourself, what's in my control right now? People who have high agency are never going to argue with reality. They're just going to ask themselves, hey, do I want to spend more time explaining why something happened or blaming it?

6:44Or do I want to use my time to improve what's next? High agency is not complaining about the spilled milk. High agency is what am I going to do to pick up and fix and clean the spilled milk? So test number two to figure out where you are in the agency spectrum is action. This is where self-agency gangsters dwell. I want you to answer this question. How long do I stay stuck before I take action? Just think about that. How long? When something happens, how long do you stay there? If you're the type of person who spends a lot of time researching, thinking, creating a plan, and then creating a better plan, and then waiting until you feel confident, you're probably not going to rank very high on the self-agency like totem pole.

7:26Now, similarly, maybe, hey, maybe you'll eventually act, but you spend a lot of time overthinking. That's not necessarily bad. In fact, I'm very much that person. For a while, something would happen and then I would overthink how long it was taking me for me to get to that point. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was actually taking precious time away from my ability to do something to get an actual result instead of worrying, okay, well, what may happen? What may not happen? What's going to work? I don't know. So people with very high agency believe that they can trust that clarity comes from movement.

8:00Like nothing in life is certain, but you can create more certainty through action. So now I have a question for you. When was the last time you made a meaningful business decision before you felt fully ready? And then how long did it take for you to make that decision. So if you want to increase your self-agency, you must decide to take action despite uncertainty. So if you right now, like me, was like, okay, I'm thinking how long it's going to take for me to take this action. Then I'm going to do all these other things. Like I realized that I have developed my self-agency by making a decision knowing it will always be uncertain.

8:34And I'm doing it faster and faster and faster. And the faster I get it, the more that my agency is expanding as a result. Okay. So now we're in the last and final part of your self-agency assessment. Part number three, reflection. Now, I might push you in an uncomfortable direction. Maybe you might even feel like as if I misunderstand you. But the truth of it is that I just enjoy having conversations, even if they're slightly uncomfortable. So if you've made it to this point in the podcast, I'm just going to assume that my honesty is simply a way for us to authentically connect. When it comes to reflection, how often do you tell yourself, I can't.

9:12I don't have a choice. There's nothing I could do about this. Or do you find yourself telling yourself, what are my options? What's one move I can make today? How can I influence this outcome even if I don't like where I'm at right now? Maybe you're feeling like you're not possessing as much self-agency as you would like. Great. I have been there. I also have good news. Self-agency isn't a personality trait. It's a practice. Every time you choose ownership over blame and you choose action over waiting and you accept full responsibility of everything that happens because you're in control of what you do next, boom, you strengthen your self-agency.

9:52Self-agency isn't believing you control everything. Self-agency is believing that no matter what happens, you could still control your next move. Entrepreneurs who've mastered this self-agency become impossible to stop. Not because, oh, they got lucky or their lives were easier, but they simply stopped waiting for life to be perfect before they take action. At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that there were two people who inspire me in terms of their self-agency. I explained how Dr. Gabrielle has literally changed my life and my health and my business with her level of agency. But there's also somebody else who has been integral to my development of self-agency.

10:26And I saved it for the end of the episode because I think it's going to be a little bit mushy. I'm not going to lie. This is the mushy part. This is a business podcast. So I don't talk much about my husband and business partner, JD. But I should also mention that he has been my business partner from day one. We met in high school and we have built every iteration of our businesses together. I created this episode as proof that agency isn't a personality trait and it's not a characteristic. It's a practice. I believe some of us are born more innately with more agency than others, but it's something that you can develop.

10:58So when I met J.D., and as far as long as I've known him, he has a natural disposition of self-agency. When we met at a really young age, we were 16 turning 17, my mindset was filled with like pretend rules and barriers that I set for myself, like things I couldn't do or things I couldn't achieve because maybe I'm a first generation Latina or maybe I'm the only woman in the room or maybe I'm some statistical anomaly, therefore I can't. And when I said I couldn't do things, he was the one who always challenged my beliefs. He was always reminding me that the game will never be fair, but we are in control of how we respond.

11:32So essentially over decades of us working together, he has taught me by his actions that we are never powerless. All these years later, I can sit here and I can tell you that I used to be afraid of being powerless, powerless to like a person or a rule or a thing or status that would prevent me from being the captain of my destiny or having the ability to change my future. Now, at this point in my career, I'm almost afraid of just how powerful I can be when I don't set limits on myself. Together, JD and I have faced the darkest nights in the deepest valleys. There have been times when, in anger or in fear, I would go back to negative thought patterns or I deeply remained resentful for how unfair it was that I got passed over for an offer or unfair that a client with somebody else or in fear that an opportunity passed me by or that I was denied access.

12:22And he always reminded me that it's not about what happens. It's about how we respond and what we do next. I have strengthened my self-agency and I am putting this episode together to show you that in my most broken form, I still have the ability to develop this personality trait. It's changed my life. And as my self-agency expands, so do my business opportunities and abundance. I wanted to put this episode together for you and share personal examples of people who inspired me to grow into self-agency as proof that you can do the same dang thing. So the next time you feel stuck, understand that taking action, not blaming circumstances, and never handing your power over, that's the key to your future success.

13:04Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or a family member who might enjoy or even better send me a direct message at jasmine star because i would love to personally thank you for being a part of this community together as we grow and expand our agency individually and together thank you