What Showing Up Really Feels Like | Interview on the Made for More Podcast with Carly Meyers

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0:37Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. My name is Jade and I work closely with Jasmine as the COO and I have to be honest with you, the episode you're about to hear today is a good one. Jasmine was recently invited to speak on Carly Meyers' Made for More podcast and their conversation was so honest and genuine that we had to share it with you. If you've ever wished you could be a fly on the wall and learn about what it's actually like to run a business, just keep listening. This conversation will give you all that and more. Ah, hey, Jasmine. How are you doing? I'm doing spectacular. Thank you so much.

1:11Oh, I'm so excited to have you on my podcast. I've followed you for a really, really long time. You're actually one of the first people that I really started following and really kind of like fully bought into in this female entrepreneur space, I was like, she's killing it. And I, something that I really, really admire about you is that I followed you for a few, quite a few years now, and you have consistently shown up like all the time. There has never been a time. I know in that time you've had babies and you've had life changes, but you have always shown up and I really massively admire that.

1:46So I wanted to let you know that. That's all. Wow. Thank you. That caught me off guard. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I think it's good. I think consistency is such a, you know, it's so hard and it's the thing that people struggle with the most and it's people, you know, it's so hard when you do have life things that happen as we all do, still showing up and still bringing that, you know, 10 out of 10 energy and intention all the time, I think is something that is really, really cool. So. And I think if we could start, like we, if we could start there for a second, because what happens is whenever we hear about this, the mind, like our brain likes to map to similarities or differences.

2:21And so people who immediately create an affinity for somebody is somebody like them. And so when we start a conversation, be like, you've been consistent, you've had babies, you've had life changes, entrepreneur, some people are saying already different. Like their brain is saying, she's different, this is different, I'm more skeptical. But what I want to actually counter is while that is true, while consistency is a fact, there are dates that posts have gone out and there's efforts and like, this is what we call receipts. Like receipts are printed. They're out there if people wanna look. But what happens is I kind of wanna go back to the why.

2:53It's not enough to say, oh, consistency is important for your ambitions. I mean, we're talking about if you wanna run a marathon, if you wanna start a business, if you wanna write a book or become a poet. Consistency across the board sounds like an extreme form of self-discipline. And while that could be true, I have never identified as somebody who's just like, oh, I'm disciplined. I know how to hit my metrics. I come from the school of thought that I have never really traditionally been an outlier, somebody spectacular. I've never been the one that somebody looks at and says, oh, that's the person we're going to bet on success.

3:24I've never been the person who's really distinctly qualified to do the thing that I do. And so if anybody's ever felt along those lines, I think it's an easier story to tell myself, instead of saying I am consistent or I am not the person who's a standout, I simply say that results, results are clear indication and facts of things that I have done in the past to get me to where I want to go. And I want to get to where I want to go a hell of a lot faster than I had at any other point in my time in my life. And so results become the markers and directions of your success. So just like any scientific experiment, the more results you have, the more informed decisions you can make.

4:06So when somebody says, wow, you've grown in success, or you've grown in this, or you've grown in that, whatever that thing may be for a listener, the reason why we're able to see massive jumps of growth is not luck, it's not talent, and it's not exactly on the back of self-discipline. It is simply somebody who does enough, like they put in the reps to say, these are results. So based on my results, I can make a different, quicker, and more informed decision about what it is I want to do. So as a listener is being like, I might not be this, I'll be good, welcome to the club. But if you, like me, want to get to where you want to go faster, then the quickest way to do that is actually to have results.

4:43The results might not be, and most often for me, are not the thing I want, aspire, or imagine. The results I hope for are big and glamorous and sexy and rule-breaking and number-breaking and record-breaking. I want that. It hardly ever works that way. but it is the result period that gets me to where I want to go. So on that note, that's where I want to start the conversation more of a likeness than dissimilarities. Oh, it's so true. But I think that's, that's, that's what we need to hear more of anyway, you know, and I think realizing that we are, we are also different and, you know, results do talk so much, don't we?

5:18The results are massive, but how do you, oh God, I want to go back into your story, but now I'm just going off on a tangent. I want to ask you. Let's start. Yeah. Let's start on the tangent because the story will come. The story comes in all the different questions, but the tangent is where people get to the practical things. So yes. I knew this would happen. I knew I was just excited to get on and chat to you. And then I know I'm going to get carried away and just ask you all the questions that I want to ask you. Good. Good. There's the best ones anyway, aren't they? So if you're, you talk about results and that being like the kind of driver and that's the thing that you need.

5:48So the person that's been putting in the work, the person that's been like, like doing the do and he's just not seeing the results, Like how does that, what's your advice to that person to just be like, just keep going, keep going for those results? Well, oftentimes there it's a, it's a two pronged assessment. Number one is somebody oftentimes, and this is it, Carly. I'm just going to be very honest. I have coached and empowered tens of thousands of people. Now that's not a humble brag. What I'm going back is I'm using numbers, data, and analytics to find trends. And when I have those trends, I share the trends.

6:20And this is the number one trend I always see. Whenever somebody says, I've been doing the work, my first question is how long? Because in our mind, what we say is I'm going to become consistent. And then the minute I've decided to become consistent or the minute I've set a cadence in which I think is appropriate, I shall then see results. And oftentimes I'm telling you nine times out of 10, they will say, I've been doing it five months. And I'm like, oh, baby, let's chat in five years. And then the second thing, if somebody had says, I've been consistent and it's been five years, I then ask, can you define your level of consistency?

7:01And oftentimes, nine times out of 10 on that question, is their version of consistency? Well, great. Something is better than nothing. It's really a big question of, are your actions mapping your ambitions? Because if your goal is to get$100 million or a million dollars or$100 ,000, Well, what kind of actions are you taking to get to that number and what type of frequency? So when you look at other people who are running$100 million businesses,$1 million businesses, or$100 ,000 businesses, what are they doing? Are your actions mapping similarly to your ambitions? I am telling you those two questions.

7:36Number one, how long have you been doing it? And number two, what is truly your definition of consistency? And how does that map statistically against others? I am telling you the vast majority fall into those two categories. And if we're not getting very clear answers on that, there is a reason why we're not getting the results that we want. So true. That's the thing, isn't it? Most of the time, you're actually just not doing enough of the thing. Like we're all, I think a lot of people are quite deluded to the volume of things that you need to do or the amount you need to do and the length of time that you need to do it for.

8:04And you're exactly right. You're normally just not doing it long enough. And I also think as well, getting mega clear on what a result actually looks like. If you're only focusing on like that big result, if the only thing you're going for is like, I've only been successful when I hit that number. There are a lot of results along the way that you are hitting, but you'd probably just blind to them because you're just so stuck on that big one. Would you agree? I do agree. And then I want to back up a tiny bit because what happens is again, when we talk about similarities and dissimilarities, what we do is we give ourselves a way out by saying, I can't.

8:38So if I say, oh, well, you're just not doing enough. And then there's somebody who's hearing this, but like, listen, I have four children. I'm a single mom. I have a full-time job. So what happens is they hear dissimilarities and a misunderstanding. All I'm really saying is when you evaluate what time you have available, are you maximizing that? And that looks very different for people. If you're a caretaker, if you're a student, you have multiple jobs, if this is a side hustle, if you're a parent, if you're a partner, there's a lot of things that come into consideration. So we're gonna focus on the similarities.

9:09And the similarity across any type of timeframe or availability that one has is, are you maximizing the time you have? That's where I really want to like hedge that bet. And then secondly, goes a little bit closer to what you were referring to quite now is yes, there is the big picture. And then there are markers of success. So we have to be able to celebrate the small markers of success because those are the things that ultimately guide you to where you want to go. And then they re-inform your version of success. So I can't tell you how many times someone's like, oh, you know, my goal is to make a million dollars this year.

9:41And I love that. And I like support people. and this is like a complete dream. And then all of a sudden, when they start reaching certain levels of success and they realize that, you know, they could probably get to a million dollars on their own, but if they brought in a couple of people on their team, they could get there faster. And then all of a sudden, there's a whole skillset that they didn't experience before. Like I'm a solopreneur. And then all of a sudden I have to bring people on because I want to grow faster and do more. And then all of a sudden you're being challenged on your leadership abilities, on your vision setting, and you're used to doing things on your own.

10:07And so then all of a sudden you weigh, if getting to a million dollars in the time and way that you want was actually what you wanted if it required an entirely new skill set, like growing a team that was never in your ambition to begin with. So it is totally okay for you to celebrate the small successes, but then also use the small successes to reassess what the overall big picture is. It is okay to change your mind. It is okay to redefine your success. In fact, that is the kind of thing you could do to yourself as a business owner. Yeah, and I've heard you speak about that before, actually. One of the things I heard on one of your podcasts is you spoke about your kind of evolution of entrepreneurship, like who you are now and your niche now was not how you started out.

10:49You weren't like, I'm going to start a business and I'm going to get involved in social media and I'm going to coach people how to do it. And I remember you saying like you've had so many different niches. So can you take us back and show us kind of, just tell us a little bit about what that journey has been? Because I think so many people are so stuck on, this is what I've decided to do. And so this is what I have to do forever. And they just don't give themselves that growth to be able to change. It's crazy because I stood on a stage and I was speaking at a conference and it was January, 2023.

11:20And it was a very small slide. I think the slide in the presentation was up less than 20 seconds, but it was to give an overview that I understood the idea of growing multiple businesses at different times. But it was during Q &A that people, I would say, probably 50 % of the questions kept on going to that one slide. And I realized, oh, I need to go deeper on this topic of pivoting and then adding tools to your arsenal to showcase what kind of business owner you are. So let me just talk about what was on the slide. 2006, I became a photographer and I hadn't owned a camera. I simply decided that was the thing I wanted to do.

11:58And then I asked myself, how might I become a photographer? I had no money. I had no education. I had no connections. I had none of it, but I had Google. In 2008, I started becoming a content creator, but this is before that title existed. What I was simply doing was sharing my journey on how to become a better photographer and market yourself online. Around 2011, I started consulting. Other businesses were saying, hey, we like what you're doing. Can you come and do that for us? The business got so big and wonderful that I realized I don't want to have an agency. I don't want to work with other people.

12:30And I asked myself, how could I then scale what I've been doing on a consulting one-to-one basis? In 2015, I ventured into the world of course creation, which then scaled my efforts in education. And once I had done that for about two years, I realized what I wanted to do was have more consistent conversations around the changing demographics of branding and marketing. And in 2017, I launched a membership. And then all of a sudden in the back of the membership, I realized that we needed a tech component for people to be able to plan, schedule, and post their social marketing post. So for the first time in 2020, your girl who again, still finding myself in the same position, not funded, not educated and not connected, decided to become a CEO of a SaaS technology company, social curator.

13:12We are now here in 2023 and people are like, wait, what have you just done in 13 years? And I'm like, oh yeah, but here's the pattern. The pattern is I have an idea and I'm unqualified, unconnected, unfunded and uneducated. How might I solve for the thing I want to do? That's it, Carly. That is 100 % what I do again and again. And there's a good chance. There's a really good chance that in three years, I'm going to add something else to that list. Why? I like doing things I don't know how to do to become a stronger owner and create multiple streams of revenue while standing in my purpose and empowering others.

13:48Oh, you are speaking my language. I absolutely love that. I just love the idea that I believe as well that you can be anything that you want to be if you just have that mentality of like, I'll just figure it out. Like it doesn't matter what's against me. I'm just going to figure out how to do it. And I think so many people right now in my audience are 2008 Jasmine. They're in that place where it's like, yeah, I'm figuring it out, trying my thing, kind of feels like it works, kind of feels like it doesn't, but I don't really know what's going on. And I just wish that they could see 2023 version of themselves and all those steps in between and where they are right now.

14:25And I love that you show that so clearly and just trust that you're going to end up where you're meant to end up. But you have to be bold in your moves and you have to be courageous and try stuff that you really have no idea what you're doing right now. Did you ever think you'd start a software company? Never in a million years. I'd have laughed anybody, but you know, out of the room. But I have to say is two things. Number one, we get caught up comparing our 2023 selves to somebody else's 2023. When what we really should be looking at is if you are in the first one to two years of your business, you should be comparing yourself to nobody but yourself.

15:01But if you're the type of person who is so genuinely interested on comparison to see where you're indexing, well, go back to that person's 2008, their proverbial 2008? What were they doing? How much were they making? How did it look like? Because social media has amplified this idea that everybody's an overnight success and that everybody knows what's going on behind the scenes. And I kind of just want to dismantle that. Like we have to compare ourselves to just ourselves and what we have. And so I kind of created this analogy when I was explaining to people about different timelines is that when we look at other people's success, we often compare it to the tools and resources that we have.

15:31So for instance, let's say that somebody on the internet says, I want to learn how to bake a cake and they have tools to bake a cake. And then all of a sudden you in a short amount of time, same time, you decide on one day on Instagram, you're going to bake a cake and somebody else who you admire decides they're going to make a cake. And then an hour later, they're holding a cake and you ask yourself, how did that person make that cake? When I'm over here struggling, I don't even have the baking utensils. I don't have the ingredients yet. And I always go back and say, you never know the origin of the other person's cake.

16:00You don't know if that cake is fake. You don't know if that cake was given to you. You don't know if that person went to a patisserie school in France for four years to develop the skills to develop a cake in one hour. You don't know if that cake was stolen. I mean, there's so many reasons why somebody else could be having a cake that you have no idea. So what you want to do is compare the fact that you don't have the ingredients or the tools to create the cake and somebody else has a cake when you have no idea how that cake existed. So my biggest advice to people who are creating or want to build a business is focus on your own dang cake.

16:27Take the time that you need. Your first 18 ,000 cakes are going to suck. It is after the suck. It is after the learning that you too will be able to create a cake on your own timeline and be known for that. But it only comes on the back of what? Doing the small things again and again, using the results, even if the results are not what you want, to indicate and guide future decision-making. So true. I love a cake analogy. Any kind of food analogy gets me. I love it. I'm like, yes. But it is so true. And I think, you know, so many people can get so caught up in, you know, comparing themselves and it's just a completely pointless comparison because there's no context to it.

17:04So you talked about your software. You talked about your social curator. It's basically helping entrepreneurs create content and do it in an amazing way. You create a lot of content. Like I always look at your stuff and I'm like, bam, she is pumping out a lot of content. I really want to know your secrets. How do you create the level of content you do to the standard that you do? Tell me all, tell me your content creating habits? Okay, I will. And I'm going to share it all. And then you have to ask a bunch of clarifying questions because I really do want to dismantle people's ideology or philosophy or ideas or suspicions around what it takes to create content in that level.

17:41I'm going to add a caveat at the beginning that I know for me that a form and function of what I've always done prior to ever having a name that was recognized or being known or being a figure prior to any of that. The only thing I had always known was it is important to share the journey because as consumers function and as they become more intelligent online, they are making intellectual decisions on emotional considerations. People are buying and they're making an intellectual decision to buy, but based on emotional rationale. There's no good reason why somebody absolutely at one o 'clock in the morning while they're scrolling Instagram really does need that face laser, but you get it because you're making an intellectual decision on an emotional response.

18:30It's like, am I aging? I feel like you're sending it to my Amazon Prime account. I'm like, you know, you know my habits. No, because we've all been there. We've all been there. We've all been there. So here's the thing. This is the psychology of how it works. So if then we know that consumers are making intellectual decisions on emotional considerations, then my objective as a business owner, not everybody agrees, but my objective is can I appeal to the emotional considerations of somebody else? And so studies and histories and psychology show that as humans, we're looking for similarities and dissimilarities.

18:58And the way that people are getting to the similarities quicker is by way of story, is by way of visual, is by way of communication. This goes back to like cavemen ancestors who were telling stories on cave walls. We understand and distill heavy amounts of information by way of story. And so if I know that we are selling to people making intellectual decisions on emotional considerations, they're trying to find similarities and they do it the fastest by way of story, then my main objective is to say, how many stories can I tell in the most effective ways? So that is not for everybody. That is on the back of over a decade of me doing this since the beginning of my career.

19:33Having said that, I am creating content every single day. Now, Now, I am not filming content or editing content every day, but it has to become a discipline. It is like going to the gym for me. I must do a little bit every day because I realized that the way I work as a creative is that like, if I'm like, okay, here's my four hour block to go through and create four YouTube videos, I would probably fling myself against the wall. Like it doesn't work like that for me. So for me, you know, instead of running three miles in a day, I would kind of be the person to run like 15 minutes a day. You know, like we're still going to get to the three miles.

20:09It's just be different. And so every single day it's okay. Today I'm going to be writing the newsletter for the week. And then I ask myself, oh, can I turn this newsletter into a blog post? If I reformat it, can I change this blog post into a YouTube video and make it under six minutes? And so what I'm doing is always thinking, since if you always stay a little bit in content all of the time, you start thinking yourself, oh, I can make this shorter and put this on a Instagram post. Oh, I can add a couple more business tips and this can be into LinkedIn. So all of a sudden one piece of content had like an octopus effect.

20:35the core of the head. And then the tentacles and the arms are like, where else can I put this? That's the smartest way for me to do it. And so what I do is I batch videos once a month all day, but they've already been outlined. The B-roll has been added. What do we want somebody to do? How do we want them to feel? What's the story that we're adding here? And so on the back of that, I film videos once a month, and then I do a half day of videos on a phone. I really do like the mix of DSLR and phone videos. I want it to be approachable. I want it to be scrappy. I want always stay on the cusp of what's changing, what's getting people's attention.

21:08But by and large, a day and a half a month is dedicated to filming and producing them. That's so good to know because when you're trying to do it, when you're trying to video and record every day, this is what I was doing before. Oh Lord. I know. I felt like, obviously, I've got two kids. They're really young. Most of the time, I haven't slept. Most of the time, I haven't showered. I'm like, this is a lot. And your energy isn't always in that place, is it? But yeah, I've actually started recently doing that like one day of batch and it's, it's made a massive difference. Absolutely. Absolutely.

21:39And so we want to give ourselves grace and then also give ourselves the permission, like what do we need? And the more you do it again, the results, the more we do it, the more we can facilitate what it is we need. So on the days that I'm like the full batching days for videos, like JD, my husband and business partner, we bring in a support structure, either a family member or a babysitter, because we need our daughter to be fully attentive, taken care of. And I don't need to divide my attention between two things. Now, do I understand that as a luxury? Absolutely. But we've worked over 13 years to get to this point.

22:08And every time you do it a little bit more, you start realizing what you need and how your family changes and you have to flex and flex with it. Yeah, 100%. I'd love to talk to you actually about, I'd love to know the difference between Instagram and TikTok and kind of like angles that you go and, you know, focuses that you do on different platforms. Because I feel like TikTok is an amazing way to really go viral at the moment, isn't it? And really scale. Do you have a thing that you feel like is really working on TikTok? You know, if you were to ask me this question a year ago, I would have had like a very distinct difference in pathology to the way that I'm approaching it.