1h 23m 12 min read 13,065
MILLION Dollar Blueprint for Scaling (Jasmine Star)
Chris Do and Jasmine Star break down the million-dollar blueprint for scaling from solopreneur to a multi-million dollar SaaS CEO.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · September 19, 2024
The Outsider's Advantage
Jasmine Star should not be here. By her own admission, and by every statistical measure, her life was meant to follow a different path. “I am half Mexican, half Puerto Rican,” she explains, noting that statistics show over 60% of Puerto Rican girls are pregnant before 18. This was the gravitational pull of her circumstances, the pre-written story she was expected to live.
Her parents, neither of whom graduated from college, made the unorthodox decision to homeschool their children. Her father, an immigrant from Mexico who earned his citizenship in the Marine Corps, barely finished high school. Her mother, from Puerto Rico, did the same. They lived in East Los Angeles, a world of metal detectors at school and drive-by shootings on the street.
In this environment, Star’s parents created a world within their apartment, insulated from the reality outside. Yet another challenge was personal. “I didn't learn how to read until I was 11,” Star reveals. “I tested horribly on standardized tests.” She was, by all academic metrics, falling behind.
But this disadvantage was secretly forging a superpower. In a conversation with host Chris Do, he draws a parallel to the DC Comics character Cassandra Cain. Trained as a world-class assassin and deprived of speech, she developed the ability to read body language so perfectly she could predict her opponents’ every move before they made it. She processed the world through movement, not words.
Star instantly connected with the analogy. “She had something that was less and used it as an advantage has been 100% the truth,” she says. Being an outsider, overweight, and unable to read forced her to become a quiet observer. She learned to stand against the wall, to watch, and to listen.
She learned to read people. She learned to read subtext, micro-expressions, and body language. She was developing an elite skill for decoding human behavior.
This became the foundation of her greatest entrepreneurial asset: pattern recognition.
“I became very good at emulating movements. I became very good at finding patterns,” Star explains. “Once you trust your pattern spotting abilities, you can then really trust your anticipation ability. You can predict things based on patterns. And that is a huge skill to have as an entrepreneur.”
What looked like a deficit was actually a different kind of training. The very thing that made her an outsider gave her the unique perspective needed to see what others missed. This is a core lesson for any creator or entrepreneur feeling disqualified by their background or perceived shortcomings. The path to mastery is rarely linear, and sometimes the greatest skills are forged in the fires of what we lack. This is a principle that applies whether you're battling imposter syndrome or trying to find your unique place in the market.
The Courage to Be Unapologetically Weird
When Star and her twin sister entered public high school at 14, it was like landing on another planet. “I had never been around thousands of students my age,” she recalls. “I had never gone to a locker. I had never had bells ring.” The tribal conditioning of school life, a world she had never known, was overwhelming.
Her immediate instinct was to assimilate. She got a job as a telemarketer to buy the same shirts and shoes as everyone else, desperate to fit in. Our tribal brains are hardwired to seek safety in conformity; to be on the outside is to risk survival.
Her twin sister, however, chose a different path. She also got a job, but she used her money to buy clothes from thrift stores and create a style that looked like it walked out of the 1960s. “I was mortified,” Star admits. “Here goes my sister in like a big Peter Pan white collar and a lime green jumpsuit… and I'm like, I am trying so hard to match and you're so different.”
Years later, Star sees that moment not with embarrassment, but with awe. “What courage it took, what chutzpah, what self-awareness it took.”
This early lesson became the bedrock of her professional life. In an industry saturated with carefully curated personas, Star has maintained a sterling reputation for being unapologetically herself. The reason is not that everyone agrees with her, but that everyone knows where she stands.
When you show up as your full self, you polarize. But you also build deep, unshakable trust. “I think people have a deep respect for what I say because I believe it to my core,” she states. “I will be unafraid to exactly say what I'm thinking.”
For the thousands of creators hiding in public, terrified of saying the wrong thing, Star’s approach is a direct challenge. Social media has amplified our social awareness from a tribe of 50 to a potential audience of 50 million, and with it, our fear of negative feedback. Science shows we are wired to give more weight to criticism than praise, making it harder than ever to be authentic.
But Star offers a powerful reframe.
“I would rather be made fun of, I would rather have somebody not like me, I would rather have somebody criticize me for me being 100% of who I am, than a shell or a copy of who they think I should be,” she declares. “How devastating to have something hurt your feelings for you not being 100% of who you are.”
Authenticity is not about being liked. It is about having the fortitude to be disliked for who you actually are. This is a crucial distinction for anyone trying to build a personal brand in a noisy world. Your real audience doesn't want a perfect, polished version of someone else. They want you.
The First Million: Selling the Creator, Not the Creation
Star's first major pivot came during law school at UCLA. Her mother suffered a relapse with brain cancer and was given a terminal diagnosis. Staring at the fragility of life, Star was forced to confront her own path. “I was 25,” she recalls thinking. “What am I going to do for the next 15 years? What if I die in 15 years? What if I die in 15 minutes?”
The answer that came back was shocking: she wanted to be a photographer. This was a person with no camera, no creative background, and no connections to the industry. She hailed from a community of gardeners and housekeepers where success meant being a secretary. In her world, entrepreneurs were a different species.
Yet, armed with a camera her husband bought her for Christmas and a burgeoning new tool called a blog, she began. Her blog wasn't a highlight reel. It was a failure log. “I'm creating this blog because I'm documenting that I'm going to fail and I'm going to go back to law school.” She gave herself one year.
Within that year, she booked $100,000 in photography work. For a first-generation Latina from her background, this was an unimaginable sum. But it also unleashed a torrent of hatred from the established photography community.
They argued her work was subpar, that she lacked technical skill, that she was an undeserving fraud. And on some level, they were right. “My work did suck,” Star admits. “And I knew enough about the art that I knew my art sucked.”
So, what was she selling? It wasn't the photos. It was the photographer.
Through her daily, transparent blogging, she was selling her journey, her personality, her process, and her relentless drive to figure things out. Clients weren't just hiring a photographer; they were hiring Jasmine Star. Her clients loved it. Her competitors hated it. For over a decade, a segment of the industry was dedicated to tearing her down.
Her response was simple, echoing the advice of comedian Steve Martin from his memoir Born Standing Up: be so good they can't ignore you. She got better. She made more money. And she kept documenting the journey.
Soon, a new opportunity emerged from her radical transparency. Other aspiring photographers, people with no skills just like she had started with, wanted to know how she was doing it. This led to her first major business evolution.
The Ladder of Business Evolution
Jasmine Star's career is a masterclass in seeing the next opportunity and having the courage to seize it. Her journey follows a clear, escalating ladder of leverage, a pattern of reinvention that tends to happen every five to six years. It is a blueprint not just for a million-dollar business, but for an adaptable, resilient career.
It started with a simple question from her blog audience: “How are you getting your leads?”
The answer became her first digital product. In 2008, a time before slick online course platforms, she and her husband spent a weekend hacking together a storefront using a service called e-junkie. She uploaded a PDF with the 12 email templates she used to close clients.
She sold it for $19.99.
Within 12 months, that single PDF had created a $200,000 revenue stream. It was her first taste of moving beyond trading time for money. This is a pivotal moment for any service provider, a topic Chris Do often explores when discussing how to price your work based on value, not just hours.
This led to a series of rapid evolutions:
- From Product to Consulting: Seeing her success, other companies hired Star to create their content and lead generation systems. This was lucrative but quickly revealed its limits. She was back to trading time for dollars, a trap she was determined to escape.
- From Consulting to Courses: In 2015, she had an idea: what if she taught a live, two-day event, recorded it, and sold the recordings? She invested heavily in a Hollywood-level production crew, a mistake that cost her a fortune but gave her a massive library of content.
- From Course to Membership: In 2017, after launching several successful courses, she decided to build a membership. Her goal was to get 500 members to join. On day one, 2,444 people signed up. The market had spoken, and the signal was deafening.
- From Membership to SaaS: By 2021, the membership, now called Social Curator, had outgrown its initial structure. Star and her team decided to turn it into a full-fledged SaaS platform, building their own tech stack to integrate with social media platforms and leverage AI. It became a digital agency in a business owner's pocket.
This ladder didn't build itself. A critical rung appeared when Star stumbled upon a webinar for a business mastermind. The price tag to join was a staggering $25,000. “I slapped my laptop shut like it was Satan poking his head out,” she laughs. “Who is so dumb?”
But the idea lingered. Despite the fear, she applied, got in, and paid the fee. The mastermind itself didn't hand her a magic formula. What it did was put her in a room with people playing a different game. “I'm like, wait, there's other people who are making millions of dollars with digital products?” she recalls. “What have I been doing with my life?”
That $25,000 investment broke her frame of what was possible. In the year that followed, she launched her first course, a $197 product that made $255,000 in five days. That one course went on to generate over $1 million in revenue. That single, terrifying bet changed the entire trajectory of her business. It was a lesson in how investing in access and perspective can yield returns far beyond direct instruction, a theme echoed in discussions about the power of high-level peer groups.
The ROI-Positive Mindset
Jasmine Star's willingness to bet on herself, from the $25,000 mastermind to hiring an expensive production crew, isn't about reckless spending. It's rooted in a powerful belief system she calls the ROI-positive mindset. It’s the conviction that no matter the situation, she will find a way to generate a return on her investment.
“I have to accept that even if I pay a charlatan, I have something in me that will find an ROI on whatever that amount of money is,” she explains. This is a profound shift in thinking. It moves the locus of control from the seller (the coach, the consultant, the mastermind host) to the buyer. The value isn't just in what you are taught; it's in what you are determined to create.
Star admits her track record with investments isn't perfect. Not every coach was great, not every program was a winner. But in every single instance, she found a way to win.
“In the process of that, I met somebody or I created one thing that empowered me outside of them being snakes and I bought them oil,” she says. “I found a way to make it win.”
She didn’t realize this was a unique skill until she hosted her own high-level mastermind. There, she observed two distinct types of entrepreneurs:
- The ROI-Positive: A cohort of people who were going to get a return on their investment regardless of what she said or did. They were actively looking for levers, connections, and ideas to apply.
- The ROI-Negative: Another group who, she observed, were “hellbent on not getting an ROI.” They were waiting to be told exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.
This revealed a critical truth about entrepreneurship. “If you're making an investment in your business because you hope that the person on the other end will tell you exactly what to do... you're actually not an entrepreneur,” Star states bluntly. “You're a student.”
A student waits for the path. An entrepreneur forges it.
This mindset transforms how you approach every opportunity. It’s not opportunistic; it’s about being an active agent in your own success. It’s about always looking for the next lever to pull, the next connection to make, the next idea to test. Success is not delivered to you. It is extracted by you. This proactive approach is fundamental to not just starting a business, but effectively finding your first customers and scaling beyond them.
The Discomfort of the Next Level
After a decade and a half of relentless building, pivoting, and scaling, Jasmine Star has arrived at a place most entrepreneurs dream of. Social Curator, her SaaS company, is a thriving, bootstrapped, and consistently profitable business. She has successfully installed a president to run the day-to-day operations, working herself out of a job.
The machine runs without her. She only steps in for the things only she can do: high-level coaching and promotion. It’s the culmination of years of work, the reward for all the risk and sacrifice.
And she's deeply uncomfortable.
“I don't think at this point in time I am stepping into my fullest potential,” she confesses. This is the entrepreneur's paradox: the drive that builds the empire makes it impossible to sit comfortably on the throne.
Star is entering her next five-to-six-year reinvention cycle, but for the first time in her career, the path isn't clear. The scrappy, fight-for-every-inch mentality that got her here is no longer the right tool for the job. “That pushing through and breaking walls was good until here,” she admits. “I actually have to break the frame of reality because there's no way I can Ascend to the next version without letting go of every preconceived notion about the thing that I thought made me who I am.”
This is the most difficult work of all. It’s not about finding a new tactic; it's about forging a new identity.
So, what does that work look like? It’s not frantic action. It’s quiet, deliberate exploration.
Her current process boils down to two things: Creation and Conversation.
- Creation: She has returned to the daily act of creating content. Not for an algorithm, but for herself. “Creation's hard,” she says. “Creation sharpens your teeth, heightens your spine, creation makes you feel like the worst version of you and the freaking best version of you.” It’s through the act of articulating her thoughts that she sharpens her thinking and clarifies her perspective.
- Conversation: Three days a week, her calendar is filled with 15-minute calls. She’s talking to seven and eight-figure business owners, not to pitch them, but to ask questions. She is gathering data, looking for gaps, and searching for the place where she can be most valuable.
She is sitting in the profound discomfort of “I don’t know.” In a world that rewards certainty and speed, her current strategy is patience. She is trusting the process, believing that in the combination of deep thought and broad learning, the next big opportunity will reveal itself. “I need to choose what's best,” she says of her many opportunities, “and if I choose now, I didn't give it the time that it needed.”
This is the work that happens before the blueprint is drawn. It's the messy, uncertain, and essential process of deciding what to build next.
It’s a reminder that the journey of an entrepreneur is not a single climb up one mountain. It is a series of ascents, each requiring you to come back down, reassess, and prepare for a completely different kind of climb.
The work that got you here will not get you there.
TRANSCRIPT
my guest for today's podcast is long overdue and she has impressed me for a number of different reasons I'm going to tell you maybe the top two reasons number one she knows how to turn around when she's on the stage cuz you might see her kind of in the green room and she's
super chill and she's talking about how she's an introvert and has certain anxiety but when she hits that Spotlight she's a pro and she brings it all that energy that passion that determination comes through in her voice and I first saw her at Gro with video live at Sean canel's event and I
saw her I'm like I need to talk to her but fate would have it that we're not going to talk that day funny thing is how the world conspires to help us I believe we meet each other in the Green Room for something that we're both doing we're mentoring some young entrepreneurs for
the UPS Inc magazine Challenge and we're in the green room we're chopping it up and I just have this weird instant connection you know how you like meet someone you feel like I've known you for a really long time even though it's their first time talking okay number two why I'm super impressed
with this lady is she's really Brave she's like let's do a podcast together Chris that's not the brave part but she's like come to my house we're going to meet there I'm like you know in this day and age of social media you never know what kind of creeple is going to roll
up on your house you don't know me and you invited me to your house I'm but that's still not the impressive part the impressive part I'm like I pull up and it's a nice neighborhood but as soon as I pull up to your address I'm like I know that's her house I could
just tell from the outside the way it's designed the Landscaping it's modern it's clean but it's warm and inviting and I walk in and does not disappoint everything is in its place and I feel like I'm walking into one of those Model Homes you know where the real shows you like you can
buy a house like this one day and I said to her do you live here do you actually live here she goes yes with child and husband I live here I'm like this is impossible this is impossible okay Jasmine welcome to the show for people who don't know who you are can you
please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your story thank you so much for that introduction it's one of the most personal introductions and I have to say that what people see online and what they experience when somebody walks into my home and says well I and like you had said
well I I could tell that's got to be her home that is the highest compliment because I only want to be as much of myself in front of people I deeply care about and want to help and so the fact that you saw that is the kindest thing you could say to start
from the beginning so thank you my name is Jasmine star I'm CEO of social curator I am wildly curious I am a Creator and I am an innovator and I love empowering other people to believe that the impossible is possible because everything I've set out to do in my life for all intents
and purposes should not have come to fruition and yet it did and so I am a believer and I want other people to believe in themselves as too okay let's spend a minute there but really I'm going to tell everybody who's listening to for watching this this one I'm just going to call
it right now I don't want to put any pressure on Jasmine but I think you're going to your mind's going to be blown because the few times in which I've been able to sit in front of this incredible human I've learned a lot and she's so transparent about what's going on it's as
real as it gets so I think you're going to learn a lot there's going to be a bunch of unlocks for both of us cuz we going to talk shop we are there's so much I want to learn from you today so I think I'm going to take our audience on for that
Journey when you said that what has happened to you is really kind of imp plausible so let's take us back there take us back to your childhood tell us the the kind of preframe of how we can understand why it shouldn't have happened to you but yet it has happened to you well
I mean it depends how granular we want to get so I am half Mexican half Puerto Rican and statistics show that over 60% of girls before the age of 18 who are Puerto Rican are pregnant so already start out starting off at a pretty okay spot and since then having graduated at the
top of my class you know I didn't learn how to read until I was 11 I would I tested horribly on standardized tests now what I realized as a child was I was able to have conversations with people and I could connect to Spirit dots but I was in no way shape or
form what somebody would consider an academic and so the fact that my parents homeschooled us and so that's another crazy thing it's like my father didn't graduate uh High School my mom or he barely graduated high school they they passed him he immigrated from Mexico didn't know English they kind of just passed
him through at the time which was very much the case in East Los Angeles during the the 60s and 70s is just get on out and so he enlisted in the United States Marine Corp that was actually how my father earned his American citizenship so he entered in illegally swore his oath to
this beautiful country and then earned his citizenship and my mom is Puerto Rican and she barely graduated high school they never went to college and so here for all intents and purposes people are looking at my parents to say you I don't know how likely yall should be the people educating your children
at home and yet they did and so getting into High School it was just um this thing I thought to myself I don't want to be dumb even though I don't understand everything I'm going to figure it out and so I think that a pattern in my life which a pattern that has
suited me well to a certain point this is now at a point where I'm actually trying to break that pattern but what got me here has been I will not quit until I figure it out I will be pushing through I will be breaking walls I will be breaking ceilings cuz I'm going
to figure it out and I think that every time something came into my life when it came into my business I don't think I'm special I don't think I'm smart I don't think that I get things I've not been born with a silver tune Silver Spoon in my mouth but I could simply
say as long as I am the last person standing I'll find a way to figure it out and I think that that served me very well to this point and then what I realized is you know as we talk because you know Chris and I we were talking like we're going to have
this podcast we're going talk about the business of the the business we're going to get into the nitty-gritty we're going to have people like show The Good The Bad and The Oho ugly and painful parts of growing businesses but now I feel like I'm at a state at my point in my life
where that pushing through and breaking walls was good until here I actually have to break the frame of reality because there's no way I can Ascend to the next version without letting go of every preconceived notion about the thing that I thought made me who I am am and that's kind of been
my my year so far I mean here we are starting with the real stuff and the real stuff is I have to break my version of reality and that is one of the most difficult things I've done professionally okay so much to dig into there I I I'm I'm going to make an
assumption you're not really into comic books and things like that of comic book mythology but there's a little moment I want to share with you here and you tell me how much of geek you are perfect okay Bruce Wayne Batman has to replace Batgirl and there's a new girl and she's been trained
by an assassin and she's been muted all her life and what's really interesting about hers because she didn't have to develop language skills she was able to study movement in ways that very few people could so she can just look at somebody do something one time and be able to emulate it perfectly
so it made her a pretty Deadly Assassin and Batman tries to bring her to the good side my question for you is this is if you didn't learn to read till you're 11 which is really late everybody I think you developed other skills what other skills did you develop since you weren't busy
reading reading like your brain develops in different ways I think so Chris what was that what was that what was that replacement name the Assassin what was her name I don't know her name oh she became Batgirl she became Batgirl okay I oh I I love this I love this I'm going to
go on a deep dive because this is what I do things that I don't understand I will Deep dive but just at the preliminary she had something that was less and used it as an advantage has been 100% the truth because not only did I not learn how to read until very late
in life I also grew up very overweight I was obese as a child and so that that was one of the early things that caused me to be quite honestly an outsider um I I was I was made fun of but not in a way that says oh it's going to break me
it was I was made fun of and that caught me that taught me quickly to be quiet stand against the wall and have nobody notice you and because that happened it empowered me and heightened my skills to watch the way people behave so that's why when you spoke about how she was mute
and and she could emulate a movement I became very good at emulating movements I became very good at finding patterns it is one of my greatest assets as an entrepreneur I can see a pattern and once you trust your pattern spotting abilities you can then really trust your anticipa anticipation ability You can
predict Things based on patterns and that is a huge skill to has as an entrepreneur wow okay so maybe you didn't read words but you read people yeah Chris the subtext the micro Expressions body language and so you're reading on a different level okay so you're homeschooled which is kind of crazy from
parents that barely Pass High School why did they choose to homeschool that's a curious decision um mostly it was where we lived and so my dad is is one of the hardest working men I have ever met in my life he's very it was very common for him to work four jobs at
time and um we did not live in good areas and that was just the truth and my parents were very protective and they didn't like that we would have to go to school with metal detectors they didn't like that on our streets there were drive-bys like they didn't like that when we went
to the post office there was literally a driveby my sister and I were sitting in the front seat my mom who was pregnant threw us to the base of the car and then covered us and like those early fundamental memories ideas really shaped the decisions that my parents made and said if our
kids are going to have a shot of not staying here we have to create and inculcate and create their own world in our apartment and that's what they did I see okay and and so what age do you then enter into public school 14 okay tell me about that experience what was day
one like it was crazy this it's got to me I can't I don't even know how to deal with this tell about uh comic books this is literally like a like a hero going into a different planet like and the planet functions so so much outside of what you could ever consider to
be normal like I had never been around thousands of students thousands of people my age I had never gone to a locker I had never had bells ring that indicated that we were going to go from one classroom to another on the other side of Campus I had never heard of people like
raising their hand to go to the bathroom I mean when you thought when you think about like human conditioning and training it hadn't exist until that point like the first time I got a slip to go and visit my counselor in one of my classes I was mortified and then I was terrified
and so I you know walked over and I was like I'm in trouble I did something wrong and they're like okay well we got to just make some schedule changes so here's your new slip and I get my new slip and I'm like what is this new slip what does it mean like
so everything that anybody would think was normal was entirely and wildly new and so my sister I have a twin sister so my twin sister and I entered as um as freshman and we got put into like the standard academic track which was fine that we had we technically my mom was giving
us grades so the school was like that's great mom but your kids have to start like basic classes and so what I had discovered was after I learned how to read by 11 I was around 111 and a half IID learned to read I went from basic reading to Advanced reading in less
than a year so I was reading massive novels by the time I was 12 and 13 so that when I went into high school I quickly understood that I was outpaced in English and so um by sophomore year I got into advanced placement and honors track and I think again Chris it's not
because I was smart I simply said I will do everything I can to figure it out and I think it played out extraordinarily well for her for both myself and my sister we ended up graduating at the top of our classes and getting academic scholarships to college wow okay this is crazy okay
this is fantastic um when whenever I see kids that are homeschooled they're usually and this is kind of for you academically super smart self assured very articulate but they weird I'm just going to say it out there I know what to broadnet and people are going to send me some hate messages they're
just a little awkward no we are homeschool kids are weird we we're we're weird we we are and but when you think about it Chris isn't not when now I'm a parent yeah and all I want to do is look at my daughter and be like let your weird be so weird be
unapology Unapologetic ically weird because as a kid so my parents we were homeschooled but they were very active in their church and in local events so we were around other kids and I knew I was weird so I I I always knew and we were also very very poor and so people were
always sighting out like that I was wearing the same clothes and that like the church was taking collection plates and giving us Christmas gifts like I was weird I knew it but I didn't know the extent to how weird I was until I was put into a much larger Pond AKA high school
and that's when I realized everybody's doing the same thing the same way everybody wants the same shoes and the same shirt and now as an adult what I I see was happening then is as you're developing you have a tribe that is your high school and to be on the outside of your
tribe means that you can't survive our tribal brains have been so conditioned to say well if we look the same and we act the same we won't be on the outside and if we're on the outside we're going to have to sustain for ourselves and now the crazy thing about my my twin
sister and I is we went in and I immediately I got a job as a telecommunicator because I wanted the same shirt and the same shoes I wanted to look like everybody else now my sister also got a job and what she did is she went and bought clothes from thrift stores and
vintage items and she literally looked like she walked out of the 1960s and she was so her own person that I was mortified because there goes my sister in like big Peter Pan white collar and a lime green jumpsuit and like like Platinum these wedge shoes and I'm like and we look ident
I and I'm like why are you I'm like I am trying so hard to match and you're so different and now what I look at is what what courage it took what hutspot what self-awareness it took and so now being a mother of a daughter I want her to choose her path and
I will celebrate it if she wants to wear the same shoes and the same shirt how could I judge something that I once possess but if she if she wants to wear Spider-Man costumes in high school I'll be like all right girl I got you let's let's let's be weird let's be it
takes courage to pay to carve your own path I love that so that's for all the parents out there assume to be parents as you're thinking about how you want to raise your little one I I fully support and and embrace and I Want To Be A Champion for the same message I
think our duty and responsibility as parents is to reverse engineer who our children are going to be not who we want them to be and just help to support all the weird decisions that they make okay now here's one other thing that impresses me about you as a person who's been in this
space for as long as you have been there there will be moments where someone will say some negative things there's going to be some haters but as I told people I'm going to be on your podcast they kind of rose up with excitement like somebody on my own team is like she a
real deal Chris you know and and my my I'm not going to mention her by name but she's been through a lot of coaches and courses communities and eventually when you're out there long enough you're real stuff comes out and it's not always good so be careful of who you put on a
pedestal because they ain't who they appear to be and as far as I can tell everyone that knows about you it's like you're gonna be talking to Jasmine like yeah well I'm not shop Li but yes I'm GNA be talking to Jasmine and it's been glowing reviews across the board what do you
think you've done to maintain that Sterling reputation how goes back to channeling the very thing I admired my sister for having having years earlier is Having the courage to be yourself just 100% yourself I don't think that people like me because we agree I don't think that people like me because I say
really nice things I think people have a deep respect for what I say because I believe it to my core I believe it is my truth it doesn't make it right or wrong but I will I'm unafraid to exactly say what I'm thinking and how I'm thinking and for better for worse I
don't use a lot of words I will say it exactly how I see it and sometimes it rubs people the wrong way I know I'm not for everybody but for somebody who could really appreciate hearing the truth like unadulterated and just saying like this is what I see and please correct me if
I'm wrong that's power when I say I don't agree with that I don't agree with the way that this is done I am an advocate for this it really just and then not just saying because it's I'm a researcher I promise you I promise you today sometime today you're going to get a
text message with the name of that mute assassin and I I promise you I promise you I promise you I'm G to find more parallels between her and I so that in the future when we do another podcast we'll be able to make that reference point and have it as an anchor point
because I just go in and then I figure it out and then I say is this true or not true and if it's true you're going to hear exactly how I feel why exactly how I feel and why I feel that way I think that's empowering to a lot of people H I
think so many people struggle with that about showing up 100% as yourself and worried about oh is somebody going to like this post or that didn't get engagement and what's the blowback going to be like and so they just so busy hiding in public which kind of boggles my mind but you are
more the exception than the rule if I were to look across the social media landscape especially people in our space I would say like 80% of them are pretend to some degree some 100% pretending and some just a little bit pretending and so what what can you say to those people who really
are on the fence and and are going to hear this message and it's going to stir something in the side what what can you say to them right now to give them the courage to stop pretending and show up as 100% authentically themselves well I wouldn't particularly say or identify with somebody who's
inspirational or motivational I wouldn't even necessarily identify as somebody who is like an advocate to make people feel really great about their decisions what I will say which will likely rub somebody the wrong way is if you have an inkling and you're listening to this now and Chris just said that not everybody
is 100% themselves and I happen to be the exception to the rule is that immediately what we do are brains immediately it's science we want to keep ourselves safe and in order for us to keep ourselves safe we're hardwired to keep things the same because change is unpredictable and change causes Ripples and
effects so there's the devil you know which is where I'm at and I'm I'm putting it out and it's not really getting a lot of traction and I use a different voice when I show up and I I am producing content and I'm that's the trend I'm going to use the trend I'm
going to be inspirational right about now and I'm going to be something a little funny and then I'm going to show a clip of me and my dog and throw the arm around my friend and I'm living the best life on social and if that if you feel that already and you know
that what Chris hit and resonated then all I will do is follow up and say it is so hard it is so hard for you to be entirely okay in your own skin and it's never been harder before in in human relations like if we go back to our ancestors and tribes we
hung out in small groups of people and Studies have shown that the maximum amount of people that somebody is actually aware of can take in of can know a name of is 50 people 5 anything beyond that point we actually don't have a connection point of connectivity now if you would like to
bring somebody into your 50 there's a good chance that somebody will leave that 50 that is how we're Hardware as humans and then social media came along and what it did is it magnified not our 50 but to 5,000 50,000 500,000 50 million people and now what we have is we have the
ability for somebody to have an opinion about something we wear something we said how we looked how we danced a mistake we made and it feels so much more Amplified because here again science and Studies have shown that we have a tendency to listen to something that's negative than positive and so if
you're sitting here and you feel like yeah you know maybe I can be a little bit more myself I am here to tell you it will be harder than you think not because you're not doing anything spectacular special or different than what you've always done more people are going to be looking at
you but one thing that I go back down just too much root is I would rather be made fun of I would rather have somebody not like me I would rather have somebody criticize me for me being 100% of who I am than a shell or a copy of who they think I
should be because if and when anytime you put something out there it will come back to you because when somebody has an opinion about you and it hurts your feelings how devastating to have something hurt your feelings for you not being 100% of who you are I would rather somebody say I cannot
stand the way she talks the way she looks I think she's a crook I think she's fake I think she takes people to the bank and I'm like well I'm 100% me and there's a group of people who have gotten very distinct results on the back of the things that I've been applying
if that has not been the case for you or even worse you would like to have an opinion about not having done the work about me you can do that but we're just going to choose to disagree and that level of fortitude only comes on the back of I know who I am
and I'm going to be one and if you're going to like me great and if you're like like me great it's not going to stop me do doing what I should be doing all right it's on fire right now it's like there's a little smoke in the studio you guys smell that I
think something's burning yeah that's your ear and your brain excuses we're burning excuses we're bringing excuses pris yes preach preach okay all right I I I could probably spend a lot of time sitting here and unpacking the mind that makes the person we could spend I'm I'm saying this in in all sincerity
hours talking about this but I know I would beat myself up later if I didn't get into the business of the business a little bit with you and that's a line that you use on the podcast and this is where I'd love to take you and and and hopefully if you know whatever
I ask if you don't feel comfortable we we can move on and we'll edit that out okay but I imagine just based on our conversations there's probably not too much that we're going to get into tell me about the business that you're in today because I know at a period in time you're
a photographer but a different line of business how do you describe it um so I'll start here and probably not what people had expected because I think when you come on a show like this it would be better to have my crap together I think it would be better and a hell of
a lot more impressive for your listeners to be like dang Chris you got this gangster and I'm being like okay so uh what I will say what I will say is 100% my truth and doing it because I want to document it I'm doing it because I firmly believe Chris in 5 years
we're going to look back at the conversation and we're going to say how little and how small we dreamt how finite our thinking was at the time and so what I will say in order to actually say where I'm at right now was it feels like and is genuinely have been the case
every five or six years a big massive change happens in my life and that's my number my number is five or six Y and um started off my career as a photographer I was at UCLA law school my mom had a relapse with brain cancer I was so unhappy and I thought to
myself my mom was 40 years old she hadd been given a death sentence and I was like I'm 25 what am I going to do for the next 15 years what if I die in 15 years and then I thought to myself what if I die in 15 minutes like what am I
doing and so I went deep down and I said I I want to be a photographer and I didn't own a camera and nobody would ever look at me and think there goes a creative girl not remotely and at the time this is 2006 blogging becomes a thing and I start reading about
other photographers just like the daily interactions of their business now this is pre social media this is people just writing about what it is they're doing and I'm figuring out what what special person can start a business like who are the special people that because at this point Chris I had never known
a single person I was 25 years old I had never known a single person who started their own business I hailed from a community of of of gardeners and housekeepers and on the high end if you were a secretary then you just made it and so in my mind I was just like
oh well they're set apart they're different like you have to have something or be somebody to start a business and I was 25 years old and I thought to myself I actually think I could start a business with what a camera did I have a camera no did I have any sort of
skill or barometer of what I would be able to do as a creative not remotely but I just saw what somebody did and I was like I think I can do that now that sounds totally crazy but then even crazier I always tell my husband who's the crazy one the crazy one or
the person who married the crazy one so my husband went to Best Buy for Christmas we didn't have any money like Chris we had no money I was working parttime at my dad's church I had just left law school my husband was with a startup at the time we were literally I want
to say we were living paycheck to paycheck but no we weren't even doing that because hey he was getting commission from sales and like whenever that paycheck came in oh good we can go out to Taco Bell for dinner other than that it was not anything like it was so unpredictable and so
I took what I I took what I took what I could which is just practice I just started practicing and I started a Blog and I just said I'm creating this blog because I'm documenting that I'm going to fail and I'm going to go back to law school so I went on scholarship
I could go back to law school and get that scholarship a year later and I was like you have one year you have one year to make this work and then within that one year lo and behold Against All Odds Against All Odds and oh haters Unite there is no greater hater than
a Creator who is better than someone else tear that person down and them because they got something that they believed they were deserving of so case in point my first year of business I made $100,000 and to me in my family being first generation Latina that was unheard of that was the craziest
thing to ever exist 26 years old making $100,000 game over and what happened was because I was so open on my blog and I was literally giving the framework of what I was doing people were so upset because they had programmingsoftware my work did suck and I knew enough about the art that
I knew my art sucked and yet I was able to sell what I was doing by being a Creator I was a I was I wasn't selling my photographs I was selling the photographer and better or worse my clients loved it my competitors hated it there was a whole group of people for
well over a decade well over a decade who set apart and said we're going after her and that was hard and Steve Martin says it best um be so good that they can't hurt you and I got better and I made more money and I started documenting the journey and then a crazy
thing happened other photographers who did who had the same skill set I had which was none wanted to get in the game I was like look at us Bad News Bears we're going to do something so I was sharing a ton of content on my blog and then I decided to create an
online store which let's go back it's 2008 this is so difficult it's not really done there was this thing called e junkie I sat down on a weekend with my husband and I'm like I'm going to upload a PDF I'm going to sell this PDF for $19.99 because the thing I kept in
hearing from photographers was just like Jasmine how are you building your business like how are you getting your leads like what what are you doing like how are you closing people I started closing International and National clients not meeting in person which at the time was like super freaking rare and I was
just like oh I'm just I have an email that I use and they're like what's your email so I decided I'm going to put it in a PDF I believe it I believe it was 12 emails and I didn't know Chris that's actually an email funnel that I just created I was like
these are 12 emails that work really well I sold them for $1 199.99 I put them on a store I went to my blog and I was just like so if you guys want these emails that was it if you guys want these emails and within 12 months we had created around another
$200,000 Revenue stream and that was the first time that I started realizing there's there's there's different levels to the game we had a revenue stream by the clients we were booking and then we had this new Revenue stream by selling a digital resource and then at the time I just started people said
well we want to see your posing and we want to see you in a meeting and so I started selling videos like 4minute videos five minute videos for $2.99 that they can download and watch I feel I feel like that was that was like probably threee chunk right right there yeah that was
from 2006 to 2008 I believe and so then around 200 um 2009 and 2010 other people start seeing what I'm doing and how I'm getting lead generation and they asked me to start doing that for their businesses so I would write and I would create content for third parties in the photography world
and then I realized okay I'm trading time for dollars and I I I'm very distracted and so they said I said okay I'm not going to do this anymore I'm going to focus more on my business and they said well can you teach our team what it is you're doing and that was
the first time I ever understood really what a consultant was and so I was like wait a minute you're going to pay me to tell your team what to do and then a month later I'm going to come back and we're going to see like what they did and how we make it
better and they're like yes I was like sign me up uh so started started that and that you could see how the you just start seeing like these tiny little things that happened in about six years and so around uh six or seven years into me create becoming a photographer I realized I
actually don't want to be a consultant because I can only take on so many clients so we had three of new streams at this time we had Consulting we had uh taking care of my clients the clients that I'm booking and we also had the digital store but in addition to this I
am creating content daily long form content daily to just share people about my business where I'm at with the so I was blogging a long form blog every single day and so we had around 25,000 people hit that blog daily and I knew okay there's something here and I got to hit it
hard but 2010 2011 happens that's when Facebook and Twitter really get open to the masses and that's when I knew things were going to shift for me again okay okay okay okay okay we're we're here yeah we're here we're here so I understand this business and I love the evolution and how you
keep yourself open to New Opportunities and you keep kind of blowing I guess the ceiling off each time like I get paid to think that's pretty cool but you keep coming to the same conclusion like is this a good use of my time absolutely absolutely and so then what happens between between that
year it's like 2010 2011 to about 2013 um this is when Instagram also gets introduced in a very big Way YouTube gets introduced in a very big way and so with every new iteration and or platform now there were other things that were coming out too Vine came out during this time mircat
came out during this time like mircat was like live broadcasting which is now what we would consider like Instagram live but you can only do that on a separate app at the time there was mircat or there was Ustream and so everything that came out I became a quick quick consumer of it
like I need to learn it I need to understand how it translates into growing businesses cuz first and foremost I needed to grow my a my own secondly I needed to teach people by way of digital resources because it was a revenue stream that if I created long form content to educate that
somebody would pay me9 10 $20 for this information I would also apply it to my Consulting clients so understanding it and then all of a sudden I realized that I was burn out I was doing so much and I was like okay there's got to be something different and there's got to be
a different way and so then in 2015 I have this idea now I know people hear it now and they're like yeah big thoughts there girlfriend but the idea was what if I were to get a group of people together and I teach them over two days and then I record it and
I sell the recordings now of course this this this doesn't come off like out of nowhere I had an online store where I was selling you know five to 10 minute videos and I thought to myself well what would it look like to do this long form and so I oh Lord have
mercy this is one of those like tsunami moments in life but you're like I think I just sacrificed everything so it's 2015 I do a live event the tickets are $1,000 and it's a two-day branding event it's in Los Angeles and we wanted 50 people to attend and uh at the time we
had just moved into a fixer uper of a house and um the construction bid just went out of control and we had we're big Savers like we don't get into credit we do not live above our means and so all of a sudden we were spending so much money cuz we had oh
gosh this is my biggest mistake we hired a production crew we didn't have one we had eight videographers on site we had two audio Specialists we had a freaking Hollywood producer it was just I I I didn't know what I was doing I just said okay you magical people who are good at
what you do I'm going to pay you I paid out the freaking they saw me coming cha ching cha-ching it is payday when I walk in that door I'll tell you that much thing I ever done I think you held up a sign it says take advantage of me it really was it
really was like let me give you my credit card and then just take everything from it anyway and so we we I have this content now I have two days worth of video content and I have this idea like I'm going to create a course I have no idea how to create a
course I have nothing and so then um I I come across the internet of all things just some random search around this word called a mastermind and I was like what's a mastermind that was weird and so then uh in it was an invite it was a blog post and it said if
you want to learn more about what you need to do to uplevel your digital business now at this point in time I didn't realize that there is a difference between having a an online business and having a business online my business was online like you can buy something from me TAA you're online
but having an online business is different in that you've created a machine that is creating opportunities and money and growth by starting with one point that extends through the entirety of the point instead of a singular onetime transaction without any sort of follow-up upsell LTV anything along those considerations so I started getting
really interested up until this point I know nothing about digital marketing I know nothing about the digital world and so I joined this um I didn't know I didn't even know they just called it a live class they called it a webinar I'm like I don't even know what this is my husband
and I are in the kitchen and we're cooking we're making dinner and I'm watching this live class talking about things you need to do in your business and I can see like we're sitting then at the table then and the pitch is coming and my husband says oh I think this is going
to be expensive I was like me too and I said I think it's going to be $5,000 to join this one-year Mastermind with this guy who I just met on the internet that night I was like oh I'm like that's a lot and J's like no I think it's going to be 10
I was like you're crazy there's no way that some charlatan on the Internet is going to ask somebody to pay him $10,000 so we're sitting there we're on my laptop we're watching this over dinner and he pitches and he says and this join us for a year and it's $25,000 I slapped my
laptop shut like it was Satan poking his head out I was like no what what this is crazy I was like this w't be crazy this is the stupidest thing I had ever heard I was like who is so who's so dumb who is so dumb so then we're washing our dishes it's
quiet and my husband says you're thinking about it and I said I'm thinking about it he's like okay next day I said listen you have to pay $1,000 to apply I won't make it I'm like I'm not going to make it I'm not going to make it it I pay the $1,000 I
get the interview I'm invited to come to The Mastermind my husband's like see I told you you're going to be there I was like yeah but they just want my money I'm going to get ripped off but I'm still going to go because I think this thing can up Lev my business suff
ised to say I had spent $25,000 and in there now to be clear a mastermind doesn't teach you what to do there's no one-on-one a mastermind is a group of people who get together in a room and they're talking about their businesses and let me tell you Chris I had never in my
entire life what was like like I don't know I was like 30 years old 34 years old at the time and I'm like wait there's other people who are making millions of dollars with digital products what have I been doing with my life what in the world is this thing and so in
that year I decide I'm going to teach myself how to do a course I'm going to ask these people how they've done their other courses now the first time we ever launched a course it was $197 we had open cart 5 days we made $255,000 in 5 days and I was like my
whole world everything that I thought was normal was pushed out the the water and then we ended up launching that thing twice more that year and so just on that one 197 course we brought in over a million dollars just on that alone and then we started parlaying it into how do we
leverage this and other things we launched different courses by 2017 we had launched a membership and I was like if I just get 500 people to join this membership it would be so great because we're diversifying our product suite and meeting people where they are we launch it 2,444 people sign up on
day one and I'm like oh my God something going on here and then in 2021 we decide to turn the membership into actually a SAS platform we needed to be on our own Tech stack we needed to integrate with every social platform because what we do is we Empower small business owners to
create their marketing schedule it plan it be a part of community we have courses on the inside we have challenges and so this is basically what we call for the small business owner your digital agency in your pocket everything can do for your business can happen on your phone and we want to
facilitate that and make that easier and so if I ended it there if I ended it there I think it sounds really really like great and be like okay this is why I have Jasmine Chris du show like this is why and I just want to be very clear because you get to
that point and at the time of this conversation I'm on year six of what is social curator and I I've learned so much about tech about having a SAS offer around moving in terms of how people get investment who gets investment how people like me who look like me sound like me walk
like me talk like me are educated my skin color all of that how people like me do or don't get funded and I'm very proud to say that everything we've done has been bootstrapped I'm very proud to say that we've always been positive I'm very proud to say that we've always been posting
profit and that is such a rare thing for people to say that on the real hard days when I'm just like I'm doing everything wrong just like but what you're doing is what the 1% are actually able to do and so I could Relish in that and so what I've taken a big
step back and started asking myself is am I stepping into my fullest potential and it's been very hard and I I don't really want to talk about it publicly but I absolutely will and I don't think at this point in time time I am stepping into my fullest potential and so we have
our president who's been sitting for the past year and a half in charge at the helm running all things social curator and what I do in Social curator are the things that only I can do if somebody else on the team can deploy against it they will and so I do business coaching
on the inside of social curator I will do promotions of social curator and that is the extent of what I now do in this massive business opportunity which feels so good there's so many people who are saying yes but how do I work myself out of the business and this is just like
a little notch in my belt but I I have to like tether it by the other side of what are you doing though what is the next iteration what is the next iteration of you what is the and and for every time every iteration of my career Chris it's been pretty clean I'll
be honest it's like I pitched you the whole disnei Hallmark version and then one thing and then one thing and one thing and razzled Dazzle and this is the first time in my life my career where I'm like actually I don't know and so it's been pretty pretty pretty quiet for the last
year for me just to do the work for me to study like what do my days look like a lot right now I'm going back to the thing that has always been the thing that have kicked my ass is create creation's hard creation sharpens your teeth creation sharpen like heightens your spine creation
makes you feel like the worst version of you and the freaking best version of you creation sharpens why you think a certain way and so I went back to the thing that I felt was like getting back in the ring of creating and then also my calendar three days a week I talk
to seven and eight bigger business owners with nothing other than can I have 15 minutes I'm asking questions I'm asking questions and I hope that in the creation in the ideation in the knowledge I'm going to be able to see like what is the gap where am I most valuable what's going to
be the biggest lover to pull because at this point in my life and career Chris how freaking fortunate that I am to say it's not because I don't have opportunities I have too many opportunities and so I'm just like I need to choose what's best and if I choose now I didn't give
it the time that it needed to gate so I'm just going to sit keep my mouth shut trust the process and really believe that when the time's right we're going to strike it hard and we're going to strike it hot okay it's a lot of process there you you said that you were
hoping to get 500 people to join your membership you got 2,444 on day one incredible feat there I'm curious what that membership cost was like and what did it cost to join the membership well during the first five days of the membership we had an introductory offer for $25 because after the five
days it was going to be $35 mhm and since then since six years ago we've added structure on boarding time timeline access to all content at the time you were buying just one month of content and now social care is $59 a month but you get access to every single piece of content
um ever created and we also leverage AI so you're when you're feeding Doty we call her Doty because she connects the dots you're feeding her your voice you've built out a profile so it's different um it's like an extension of an llm in that like the more you use it the more it's
going to be tuned and the more information you give it in your profile the better off those results are going to be so a lot a lot of iterations and changes since then okay now you also mentioned this Mastermind that was five times more than what you thought it was going to be
but you joined it anyways and this is a theme that I've seen in you and that you're not afraid to invest in yourself and Sean loves to say this Sean Kell loves to say this scared money don't make money and you definitely aren't scared money and this is really fascinating for me because
especially given your background growing up with not a lot of money poor we we we look at money as like more than what it is like money is your god and you have to respect it and you you leave it alone you bury it under uh the bed or mattress whatever the expression
is but you on the other hand are like I'm going to spend money I'm going to go for it I'm curious about your mindset around spending money to invest in things that may or may not work out because there's no guarantee you talked about this you know the devil you know and the
devil you don't this is the devil you don't and that person could be a total charlatan and you just gave them $25,000 that's not easy to come by what is it about you that allows you to do that I know it and I I say this with all humility but it's also that
I hope that you know and like people listening know I just I do the damn work to figure it out and so I don't say this be like I'm just like this the amount of inner work and awareness that has to exist in order for somebody to make such a significant amount is
that I have to accept that even if I pay a charlatan I have something in me that will find an Roi on whatever that amount of money is and I have to say not every investment I've made in a coach in a mastermind in group coaching in Consulting I can't I can I
can honestly tell you I do not have the best track record but I will what I can tell you beyond a shadow of Doubt was in the process of that I met somebody or I created one thing that empowered me outside of them being snakes and I bought them oil I found a
way to make it win and and to be honest Chris I didn't know that that was unique that that skill of I will make this Roi positive was a skill I had the honor and the privilege of Hosting my very own first Mastermind back in 2023 and uh worked with 15 amazing entrepreneurs
and it's crazy to go from being in a mastermind to hosting a mastermind because now you're looking at it very differently and I started noticing that there was a cohort people within it that were going to get an Roi regardless of anything I did or said and then there were people who were
hellbent on not getting an Roi and they didn't see it that way they didn't see that they made it impossible for themselves to get an Roi and let's talk about that like this because this goes back into any type of investment that you make in your business if you're making an investment in
your business because you hope that the person on the other end will tell you exactly what to do how to do it and when to do it again and again and again you're actually not an entrepreneur you're a student you're just looking for somebody to give you the path there and it will
never work that way and so how you how do you become Roi positive in anything you do is always look for the next lever and the next win and it's not opportunistic it's not opportunistic at all I landed one of the hugest contracts for consultancy last year not by going in and saying
this is what I do but by picking up the phone and calling this guy and being like hey let's brainstorm like what what's going on I'm like have you thought about this this like okay I'm I'm going check back in five or six weeks later I'm like did you ever have like did
this thing ever happened well I didn't do did you do this next thing you know I'm bringing on bring being brought on as a consultant because he saw what I did it trusted this came outside of an investment that I made $5,000 to be a part of a group and then I started
picking off people hey I think I can talk to him hey I think I can add value I don't go in pitching I go in and being like let's do something great let's do something really big and oftentimes the the blessing and the curse of the content I create online is that people
will say she's a Creator fine call me call me whatever you want but I will say that the content I create really doesn't position me as a go to market strategist or as like a brand professional as much as your content or anybody else's like that girl really knows how to get your
attention boy one time on a podcast they end it and say and if you ever want to see your booty shake this is the person and I was like oh and guess what Chris I cannot be offended by that because guess what I had shaked my booty there's no lie in it Chris
there's no lie it's just when you hear back the things you do you're like oh wow I I have got it get I had got it I had allowed it to get there I had and boy did was that just like a good course correction and I realized there's a dichotomy of like
the content that people are seeing and then the people who value most and will pay me quite handsomely and guess what is is that my business is cons consultancy my business right now no could it be maybe I don't again where am I at I am letting things come to me and finding
ways to create Roi moments and I just look at admission to a mastermind to an event to a cohort as simply I'm going to get in the room because for so long and we don't have to get into the history of it minorities and women and poor minority women have always been excluded
from rooms and so I just have to believe that if I can pay to get in the room one day I will host the room one day I will invite other people into this room and everything that I learn on the inside of the room I hold myself responsible to be sharing what
goes on behind those closed doors because I have been given the 1% of the 1% of the 1% opportunity so you bet your bottom a dollar I will be buying my way into those rooms okay I I I know that you're a thoroughbred entrepreneur despite not having any entrepreneurs in your life in
your early formative years because what you say really kind of resonates with my entrepreneurial heart is that you and I we can go in a room and experience something that's really lackluster but walk away with some gems that's right and we'll work real hard to like pan for that gold and it could
be a couple of flexs but we're going to turn those little flexs of gold into something much bigger and so I think people like you go into any opportunity quote unquote and will get the maximum juice from that fruit and some other people it's like already squeezed for them and they're like H
I don't know I just don't like the flavor and I think that's something really unique so I want to ask our audience to think about this when was the last time you participated in a mastermind a course a workshop a mentorship program anything that you've committed yourself to and took on that attitude
because I think that's got to be one of the biggest keys to success and I know it's a cliche when life gives you lemons start a lemonade stand and you know how to do that in Spade now I'm going to just get super selfish with you I don't know anything about masterminds I
sort of ran one for a minute and also from some advice from you cuz you're like you are we going to are we going to go there are we going to go there we're going to go there right now you save my bacon okay because you said to me in the Green Room
Chris don't do a year program hold on wait wait wait wait wait we got to take people back brother we got to take people back we got to put them in the room the Storyteller and me you're going to say the story set the set up this gu is my husband crazy he's
like Jasmine not everybody needs to know what style shoes you were wearing I was like no no no so Chris and I are mentors for the ink magazine and the UPS door challenge now I've seen Chris at a distance we've known each other in like casual nods I have actually sat in audiences
where I paid tickets to listen to the brother I was a fan far before he even knew I existed so the fact that we were both chosen as mentors I was like oh my God the Chris though okay so then just imagine we're at the top we're at the top of the observatory
Center we're in New York City you have expansive views of New York City and then the the mentors they put you off in this pipe and drape you're basically in a white marble on the inside of this gorgeous room and they have fruit and they have snacks and Chris is there talking to
other people and so then I sit and I'm ease dropping he doesn't know I'm ease dropping but I'm ease dropping on Chris's conversations as he's talking to other people and he's kind and he's good and then the producer says okay everybody who's not a mentor needs to leave so Chris and I find
ourselves seated next to each other on a couch take it away Chris you're right context doesn't matter oh my God the story is going to be much much more interesting so we start talking business now I have to say I I'm I'm I'm just so socially awkward despite not being homeschooled I'm just
normally socially awkward I have no excuse for this okay and I'm like uh do I talk to her I know I've seen her on stage what do I say but we get into the heat of it and it's awesome and you start pouring into me I tell you that I'm going to be
starting a mastermind or something and you're talking about something that you're doing and you gave me some some amazing advice and this is part of the theme Here gold can be found anywhere not even in a classroom you could be in backstage and you could say one phrase to me that gets me
to think differently to act differently and choose a different course of action and you said something to me I'll credit you for this hey man don't commit to a year try it out for six months just start the program chop it in half and just do it for six months and I was
like kind of genius and I'm so glad that you told me that because I would be somewhat miserable right now still running my Mastermind figuring it out and I'm glad that when that six month came up I was able to get like some ity and some space and I'm still thinking it through
now as a person who's never enrolled in a mastermind I'm I guess I'm the opposite you maybe I'm just cheap I don't know I just don't go for these things and so you start telling me later on in our second encounter in person about how things are run and I'm like shoot I
need to learn from you so you enrolled in this program and then you've run your own Mastermind what does one need to know can you give us the high level these are the big Concepts here's it should work here are things you should avoid because I just want to learn from you as
a student right now yeah and so this is why I actually truly believe that it's not just going to be beneficial to someone like Chris or somebody who wants to host a mastermind I will say filling a mastermind is wildly difficult it's one of the hardest things you're going to do because it
is a hi to get offer because of the proximity to the person who's hosting it so when people love the idea of hosting a mastermind but to have another person pay a significant amount of money money for that um it it it it takes a lot to move that level of audience to
that point so I'll say that however I do think that making a case for a mastermind how it should be hosted things to be looking for work just as well for somebody who's looking for or wanting to invest in a mastermind and I say this and you know my family makes fun of
me because they're like just the way you talk you you talk so much like you know it all and I'm like I actually don't intend to talk like an Odo I I really don't I came out of the womb I was like M mommy you did it wrong okay let me let me
tell you how to make this better okay but this is what I will say about this one thing Chris about this one thing want this one thing I have invested in so many masterminds I have invested in group coaching I have done executive cohorts like I get it and I believe beyond all
else it's important for representation to exist in those rooms and and it's not always altruistic I will always find a win just like but I believe anybody can find a win if they're looking for the win you got to work for the win you got to dig for the win okay now what
I will say is the way to the best of my recollection and Chris please feel free to correct me when we were talking in New York two years ago the framework of The Mastermind was people would come in and then Chris would be teaching yep and um I want to be clear based
on a lot of research and being a consumer that a mastermind is not for the host to teach the The Mastermind is for the host to facilitate to push and prod so you want to look at this as a mastermind is as there's a shepher and their sheep and your job as a
Shepherd is to keep the Sheep moving up the hill and as long as they're doing it together we're going to believe that the Sheep are smart enough to find winds or pastures to graze in now coaching is when you as an instructor as a guide come in and teach and not just teach
what's on your mind we're going to teach a framework we're going to give howtos we're not going to howto with you we're going to teach the howtos so that you are now a sheep among sheep you're the head sheep so you're going to be teaching along with the rest of the herd how
to navigate those Hills and you're going to show them the best path and you'll be like okay so you got to take four steps and then move to the left that's what a good head sheep does but you're not saying I'm gonna push your feet for you and then you have oneon-one instruction
that is the equivalent of somebody saying okay I'm going to wait until you move your feet just move your feet okay let's go so that spectrum of if you're trying to host a mastermind at a high ticket level and attract a high ticket audience and what you do is teach teach teach teach
you're actually going to be pushing the audience in a different direction because traditionally what people want is I want to be in the room with those other bright people and here's the thing this is the thing that you know and this is the thing that I know we don't know it all but
we know how to get the right people in a room so that we're all collectively doing that so people are paying you Chris to say I bet on you Shepherd to build the best flock that's a lot of freaking responsibility and it takes a lot of strength not to want to jump in
and help when we see a a a a sheep is stuck we have to say you have to find your way or let's help a few other sheep come in and you really are only stepping into somebody else's business when they're in a really hard spot and for Chris to actually distill that
down and get it down in six months and then really convey that on the front end because we have to look at this from like a business product suite and your product Suite is like an incension model so Chris does a ton of free content the guy kills YouTube videos I mean people
will take a sword for Chris I hang out with Chris every time I hang out with Chris somebody's like Chris can I get a photo with you I mean we could be at Target we could be at Ocean uh you know in Beverly Hills and they're asking for photos I was like I'm
coming up with Chris and so that is starting his funnel and then what he has are smaller ticket offerings taught by other people then he has courses that are you invest and you buy on demand and then he has coaching programs but if the person who's in in a in a mid-level coaching
program GS to The Mastermind and is expecting the same thing that's not on the user it's on the sales team or it's on the sales page it's on Chris to say this is what's different if you are expecting me to be your one-on-one coach we're going to be misaligned I feel so called
out no I didn't say that that's what you did I didn't say what you did I didn't say that's what you did I didn't say saying you're right you're right girl I did it all I would go to these masterminds and half the group would be expecting it to be a mastermind framework
which is a bunch of baddies in a room being like have you thought about this have you thought about that okay what about this I'll follow up versus when you go into a mastermind and then the the host is just talking and teaching for 8 hours which is great but a mastermind is
not 1+ 1 equals 2 a mastermind is 1 plus 1 equals 30 because 30 people 20 people are in the room you get more than having just the singular smartest person who's who's doing that very thing well there's 29 other people who all have a different perspective and you get to where you
want to go faster based on the collective not just the single person okay I learned this I've done the worst of all things I've actually gotten in there and did the work for them I mean I I committed all the sins I became the Sheep I'm not even a head sheep I'm going
to chew the food and I'm going to spit it out and you eat it now cuz it's done so I okay Lessons Learned here sometimes you you learn cuz you're smart sometimes you learn CU you're stupid and this one is just on the back of like dumb things I've done and that's why
after the six months I was just burnt out yeah I don't think they got what they wanted and I didn't get what I wanted and I don't know if we moved them enough we didn't get to the to the stable or whatever I didn't Shepherd them in so I'm GNA ask you right
now tell me what it's like as a from a structure point of view what a typical Mastermind is when you facilitate tell me the right way I just feel called out for the wrong way please teach me the right way how does this work okay so um here again you and you know
you know I only spit like I spit the truth and I'm going to say that in 2023 we hosted a mastermind it was 6 months it was 15 people and to the best of my ability I said what a mastermind was but half the people in the room had never been in a
mastermind and so what I should have done only looking back was I should have repeated that at least once a month because at the end we did an exit survey okay so then at the end of the six months there was a group of people who said okay we want to sign on
another six months we had a wait list for The Mastermind and then something came in like strong intuition I can't explain it the team was like okay we're ready to go I was I was already doing interviews for people to come into the Mastermind and I was like I'm so sorry none of
this makes sense I'm pausing this I was like I'm out of alignment right now and the team was like what like we have Revenue goals we have targets we we we're planning these events and I was like I know I'm out of alignment and if I'm out of alignment we're not going to
execute and I'm so happy I did that because in other times I created created and launched a different offer that was much more where I needed to be that I do believe in fact would help our Mastermind members so I'm happy it by the time it was turning everything upside down but what
I will say is the distance between ending that first Mastermind and now working on our next one and no I'm not pitching it we're not even even talk about that here because it's not what I do on the show I we talking about the lessons here was that the distance between ending that
one and coming to the first one it's like for people who thought I was you know myself honest and truthful yeah but now what I'm going to do is I'm going to be so crystal clear that I'm going to say it again and again and again I will let you down if you
think you're going to be getting one-on-one sessions with me I will let you down if you think this is going to be warm and fuzzy accountability you're going to get a text message hey Jennifer checking in did you do that no honey no you have to I can't want it more than you
so I'm going to read just one thing that is a part of the sales page now I'm this not even like the sales this is just this is what we will include but we start up with this is what a mastermind will not include a personalized road map this is not a course
or group coaching well the master sessions will include guided prompts and ideas to help you up level you will need to get clear on what you need to do in your business and The Mastermind group will provide feedback support and insights along the way it will not include handholding it is up to
you to make the most of this Mastermind and reach out to other members share feedback and insights and hold each other accountable if you're ready to go all in you need to decide on your own and be okay with exactly this I don't think that's warm and fuzzy and then and then when
somebody signs up they're going to have to pay an application fee if they don't get accepted the application Fe is returned but we really only want to deal with very serious people and so on part of that we're going to make them sign each part of their level of expectation you will be
a part of our slack Channel you will show up to the live classes you will attend both events you have to sign it once they do that I will have a 30 minute one-on-one session on boarding setting the culture what do you want what's the goals how do we get those measurable goals
because if you come in and someone's like I just I just want to be inspired by The Mastermind that's a little bit of a pink and orange flag me because how do you define inspiration and how I Define it are two totally different things now can you be inspired achieving a specific goal
yes now in order for us to hit the goal we have to know what the goal is and that's what we're going to be doing during this onboarding and at the end of it we're making them sign an agreement this is what I agree to because at the end of it there were
some people who felt disappointed now here's a perfect example a person comes in with ex business and what this person wanted was to expand that business halfway through this person realizes oh I can duplicate this business go super niche in a market and start bringing in Revenue using the same team and I
hear that and I'm like winning winning winning good that's where you need to be but except by making that decision what are you doing you're using your current Revenue to start up the new Venture so you didn't grow your revenue and so now you're going to say that you're disappointed that you didn't
grow your Revenue in 6 months and I'm like how about we have a conversation in 16 months how about we have a ation in 6 months when you're doing double what you would have done before given the same time frame I can't make you appreciate or think about the wins if you came
in only thinking one way I need to make more money I need to get an Roi on this Mastermind honey you will get the ROI but do you have the patience to wait after this six months because all good ideas and then when you had this idea at month three were you really
expecting to get it off the ground and make money in three months what kind of businesses are we actually running here and of course I sound like I'm hot under the like I'm like hot and bothered I'm not I care so freaking much I care about obviously my name and the offer and
I wanted this person to be happy with it but I care that you think like a freaking winner and thinking like a freaking winner means that you don't win every single day sure maybe you're not hitting your Revenue goal for quarter three talk to me quarter 2 and 25 let's have a different
conversation then I can't teach you how to think I can't teach you how to win I can't teach you to mind for goals I can't teach you to be appreciative and so this time around I was like I'm going be very clear I'm going be very clear I would rather have a mastermind
with five people people than 20 and 15 who had mmax expectations and so going in it makes me feel free it makes me feel light I know what I'm doing I know exactly who the guests I'm going to be speaking into because what we're doing in this Mastermind is seven figure business owners
only I want to get us all in like a better framework so that we say this is what we're doing and how we scale and what I've known to be true is how you scale in your seven figures is done in two ways it is done in people and it's done in systems
that's unsexy and unglamorous behind the scenes work that very few people want to do for people who are stuck below 2 million it is only because of two reasons you haven't built the system to scale or you haven't build a team to scale and so what we want to do is get a
group of people who are going to be between that two and seven figure range like great what is our goal collectively to get to eight figures some of us will scale faster based on the depth and the breadth of our systems and our people but who are we bringing in as guest speakers
people who speak to those two things not sexy it's going to kill okay okay I'm excited about this but let's say like I am not in a mastermind I still want to know structurally how a call might have okay frequency how many calls are you going to do okay so this is what
I'm going to say and you just you know me if you want to know what the best bike is ride some freaking bikes Chris like get in a mastermind pay money care shock yourself shock yourself with what you're going to spend in a mastermind that's how you're going to figure out the type
of Castle you want to build or the menu you want to curate but I will tell you structurally and here's the thing someone's going to hear this and be like I've never I would never that's not what masterminds do you're right because some masterminds they meet twice a month but generally speaking most
of the masterminds I'll tell you the general framework of what most the masterminds do most masterminds are 12 months I personally think that's too long we're too long committed the people who are not getting results and this is what always happens if you have a six-month Mastermind people start seeing results around the
halfway point we gauge ourselves according to a Finish Line move the Finish Line forward you figure out how much more you can get done this is what I've learned so what happens you have a 12-month Mastermind around month six there's like a lot of movement the people who are not getting movement they
turn into themselves and they either become complainers or they become very needy and so what we want to do is make sure that we're facilitating a time and a feedback loop that people feel really supported and so generally a Mastermind will be for a fixed amount of time um it will be a
monthly call Via Zoom it will be 90 minutes to 120 Minutes depending on the size of the group the uh host will start off and give like either an update about what's going on in their business or a key takeaway something that's all pointing into the transformation now let's peel back even further
the best masterminds have a very specific theme or transformation that the members are trying to achieve when the m masterminds that I joined were like very very very broad it was hard for us to find connection points the masterminds that all focused on launching that focused on course creation dang like those ones
were so Niche specific and all of the conversations were focused around those one things do I think that the lifespan or longevity of a niche specific masterminds are long no because how you don't want to be a part of like a launch Mastermind for four years like you you know what you're doing
by that point in time so um the transformation what does that person want at the end or throughout the master what's our singular Focus so then the speaker the host will come in talk about getting everybody calibrated on what was your goal this is a transformation this is a time frame are you
training towards those things then either you will bring in a guest speaker who speaks around 40 minutes we do Q&A based on that topic but again the topic isn't fun and sexy unless it is but it really is pointing towards the transformation and then every other one we do what we call a
hot seat or what we call a reframe and this is where somebody in the group we follow a very specific framework you have to apply for them at least in my masterminds and the best masterminds I've been in um you have to apply for a mastermind because you have to be very clear
like what is your problem or what is your question so you fill out like five or six questions and then the host will say hey we have Stephanie Stephanie does this in her business this is what she sells this is her pressure point so when Stephanie comes in she probably speaks for like
one or two minutes to color it and then the group will ask one of two things clarifying questions like wait do I actually understand what's going on in your business and then two you don't say this is what you should do you offer Insider feed back be like I was in this situation
now not exactly the same and I did X Y and Z or hey have you considered bringing in this person or what is your or chart actually look like and it is the question very similar when I had asked you the question in New York hey have you considered just doing it six
months that's not deep thought Chris that's not a deep thought but you mold it over and you're like you know what there's truth there that is a freaking Mastermind it's hearing from enough people and so I I um recently joined it's called Vive Vive by Vayner it's Gary Vayner Chu's Mastermind and that
uh now they don't call it a mastermind very very clear away from any sort of digital marketing references they call it a growth and Leadership accelerator and it was $50,000 for four months and some people hear that and they're like that's crazy like what the heck however they have h a weekly meeting
every Friday and they have three Live Events and they promis that it's small so it's five CMOS from Fortune 500 companies and five entrepreneurs they wanted that diverse mix now what is the transformation they provide a leadership and growth accelerator like you are going to change as a leader and by changing as
a leader you're going to be able to grow your organization in in new ways and so I brought that up just to show the Spectrum like here I am talking about here's a framework and they what they did is they went and broke their own framework and said how are we going to
make this a win for us they figured that out and here's the beautiful thing is that yeah they're using Gary's name but it's not Gary's group he had his former CMO Andrea Sullivan and his former coo now they're both in the organization but they're now running the division that is Vive and the
two of them run it facilitate they bring in guest speakers they create events and so at the time is this recording the second event the first event was in New York City the second event will be at vcon and so do you see what they're doing it's like the first event was in
New York and aligned with his bookd drop so we went to New York Stock Exchange the second event isn't aligned with Von he's going to be Gary's going to be in La anyway and so what they're doing is they're trying to get the group closest to Gary so that Gary can swing by
for like 90 minute Q&A sessions check in on check in on us and then the last session is going to be in New Mexico at a Health and Wellness Center where he'll spend two days with us and so does that look like any Mastermind I've ever been in no not at all am
I and I just went in and I said how do we how do I take what I'm learning here and apply it to my own Mastermind my biggest freaking takeaway I can I have already Roi positive after the first event was I don't need to be all things to The Mastermind I talked
about how the the the host was a Shepherd I can pair up with two or three other Shepherds I see Gary do it and guide everybody to where they need to go and it becomes less about the person and more about the transformation and that was so eye opening for me and so
everything they on that since that point since that first session I was like it's just been Roi positive it's been really great for me very very H okay so I I think I'm getting it now and you're spitting fire the whole time so I think the big kind of mindset shift for me
is The Mastermind isn't about tactical things the how-tos the step by step or accountability it's just asking a question help the person reframe and find their own way and if you select the right people that's what they're going to Value if you select more process oriented people they're going to like uh this
is not I don't know what to do with that cuz you're not literally telling me to step by step so I've committed all the sins lesson learn um I'm slap my hand after this show and just kind of think about it cuz I'm so not ready to get back into it but this
brings a lot of clarity to me I really appreciate you doing that and sharing so openly I have a question for you yes before before that question can I say one more thing yeah is there's a group of people who need you in more ways and so I would just caution your um
I timeline around when you're ready for it because there's one thing will make a big difference you said it's maybe not all the systems and the exact how-tos but based on the library of content you and your team have created there's going to be people in The Mastermind who actually need those very
things that are already created this is why at the end of my Mastermind I didn't renew because I said I'm getting so many questions around launching in our launch methodology because we've had so much success with it that I paused I said I am making a whole course on the exact sop standard
operating positions standard operating procedures how-tos step by step on how we launch so that in the Mastermind when someone's like but I'm really looking on like what's the Cadence of the flow great well we have a partnership with convertkit I'm going to send that to you they're in my Mastermind I don't need
to say that anymore like oh but I was really working on our messaging great we have a whole course on messaging or here's just this one unit so now the team was going to be able to look at the swath of our information and for somebody who we can serve with a high
piece of robust content we'll send it to them but we do not need to be be the disseminator of it I think you're really well set up for people who need that support based on your content already so I would just say whatever time that you think ask yourself how do I want
to be in a group and what do they need what is the transformation that I'm pretty sure they can get on their own under my guidance I think that will get you to an answer and and and hosting one really soon and I think you should get in one I do okay I
don't know why but I'm so I'm so reluctant to do it I I hire people for oneon-one teaching and coaching and I'll pay a lot of money for that and I'm just kind of guy like let's just scrape I can learn everything I need to learn in 30 45 minutes and I'll I'll
be able to execute now I do the same I do the same but but there is something to be said like if you went in and it was an experiment you're like this is just an experiment it's just an experiment and you take what you take and you leave the rest and you
figure out oh I hate this so much and then it makes your Mastermind better everything's a win everything's a win okay um running out of time I want to ask you the question which is with with Gary's growth accelerator you said this weekly calls are you on every call and are you getting
value from it or do you even need to get value oh my God oh my God okay oh okay well here's the thing I spit my truth and I would never say something to somebody that I didn't say some to that person directly yeah okay so they lay out the weekly schedule of
calls and they have people like Damon John and Bobby Brown they had their um Vayner AI team they had their vayer um LinkedIn growth team and so every week there is a different guest now Andrea and James did a check-in now I was talking to JD and I said listen I love these
guest speakers I think they're all amazing but I think that the ROI on learning about growth for say ex company well impressive and good it's not really moving us like towards a needle what I wish if they were going to have such a diverse spectrum of speakers would be that each speaker answered
the same set of question questions because then what we would do as a listeners would be able to get the different answers and then distill them so that we can apply them to our business but everybody's kind of come in and they've done their own thing which is not bad remotely but it's
very similar to the content that you're getting at like a conference and so um I told JD I was like do you think that I should like go back and let them know that it would probably be really more valuable for us to have more time with myself and the nine counterparts cuz
they're freaking brilliant people and he's like no like Pace it out and so then I was like but I'm not sure if I'm going to go to like this session or this session and he called me out and he said if there was somebody in your Mastermind who came to you and said
hey here's ways that we can get better and they didn't show up to the calls that You' provided he's like you would feel a certain way about it and I was like sure I would and he's like so if you're going to come you need to experience so that they know you were
fully committed and then preemptively because they're freaking amazing they had a check-in call Andrea and James are like what would you like to see different and I said I would love to actually I love the speakers but I want more time with the people like I want to learn from them and they
said you know what everybody we've spoken to has said the same thing they're like we're learning so this is their first ma in voyage and what they're doing is they're adding more sessions and then the next time they do it they're not going to have as many guest speakers but hey what does
this show everybody what is what did you learn on the back of your Mastermind things to do and get better what did I learn I learned a hell of a lot of things I'm going to get get better I thank the people who did my first Mastermind I thank them it is not
easy being the first crew I thank them desperately and now I'm so honed in the second group game over and now what do I see by people I deeply respect people who have hundreds of millions of dollars in an organization and they're saying we're learning and we're getting better that's business that's business
okay that was fantastic I I I know I know uh we could sit here and peel back every single let make it happen I'm going drive down with Pasad it's going to be like an eight hour podcast guys a live broadcast it'll be a ticket event you're going to sit there with Jasmine
and we're going to unpack her entire brain and I'll be drawing on the Whiteboard if that's SS interesting you comment on this video share it somewhere and say we want that we want the 8 Hour session I'll totally forget about this prompt because people 8 hour and I'm like what are they talking
about and I won't remember but we'll be able to listen back to this moment and you know what's really interesting is you said every five years there's a reinvention kind of recalibration you're in the recalibration mode I totally deeply respect that I love how you work how you're able to delegate most of
the business to someone else so that you have this time to think about what the next 5 years are going to look like and we're in a Time of massive disruption and change and so I would kind of raise my eyebrow at you if you're like plowing straight ahead without really thinking reflecting
we're in the same space so there's something about you that I just feel like there's a connection even when you don't speak I'm like I think I get her I feel the same way just at different speeds and the way that we're doing it I admire you I respect you and I'm so
appreciative of your time thank you for sharing and pouring and spitting Your Truth um I don't know what else to say but just once again say thank you for doing this with me I truly adore you I think there's people that you meet and you just think like man they're better than you
than than you thought and then J my husband business partner met you in our kitchen and he's just like Chris is somebody you just want to hang out with and for JD to say that his barometer on humans is next level and I was like I agree Chris let's make this a regular
thing I appreciate you I think it's two two birds of a feather and what an honor to to flock together thank you that was easy dude that was such a mom that was such a mom thing right there we could just we can edit that part out like God ending on a mom
joke or a mom reference oh no way no way okay I do want to say this when your Mastermind whatever it looks like whenever your next thing is when it relaunches please share the details with us we'll update the description in case we beat you to it where this episode drops it's always
in a que of episode so let me know and we'll update it whenever however you want Chris thank you we're uh dropping it the we're dropping it the last week of August and the first September okay then we will definitely make that work then thank you that was um very unexpected and thank
you I appreciate it I yeah absolutely if you want to equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite you to check out the future PR group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners ready to scale
Enjoyed this? There’s more where it came from.
Get insights on creativity, business, and design from The Futur.
You can unsubscribe anytime. By submitting, you agree to receive communications and to our Privacy Policy.
“I would rather have somebody criticize me for me being 100% of who I am.”
— Chris Do
Key Takeaways
Subscribe
Details
- Length
- 1h 23m
- Views
- 13,065
- Topic
- ENTREPRENEURSHIP