Founder's Story - How to Master Instagram and Your Social Media Strategy | Ep. 49 with Instagram Expert Jasmine Star

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Today's episode we interview Jasmine Star. Jasmine Star is a successful Photographer, Business Strategist, and Founder of Social Curator. She has an inspiring journey going from dropping out of la...w school to becoming the internationally-recognized creative entrepreneur. She explains exactly how she has been able to amass hundreds of thousands of loyal followers and how you can too. Connect with Jasmine at JasmineStar.com. For more info on guests and future episodes visit Pix11.com/impactOur Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. Hi everyone, this is Kate Hancock and today I have Jasmine Starr. Hi Jasmine. I am so happy to be here girl, thank you, thank you for this. I know, it's such, you know, it's an honor having you here. Everyone, Jasmine is a photographer and a business strategist. She's the founder of Social Curator. She's been in Inc. Forbes and she's a podcast host, Jasmine Starshow. Yeah. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much. So excited. I was just looking at your Instagram. We have 400,000 followers. Yes. That's amazing. Thank you. Okay. So Jasmine, tell me what was your journey like to get where you are? You know, I definitely believe that it is important to look at a segmented place in time, but also to realize that everything you learn from different moments lead you up into that. And so
Starting point is 00:01:17 while lately people have been saying, oh, well, she, you know, uses Instagram to really like help other people or grow her business. That's true. But it also came on the heels of using Twitter, using Facebook, using YouTube, using Snapchat, using the free resources that were put out on the internet to really cast a very wide net. And so from every social platform, the thing that I'm learning is how do I find my voice and how do I connect with people? Because the message is the same. Like what I talk about on Instagram is the same that I do on Facebook live, which is the same content that I'm sharing on LinkedIn. But the nuances are a little different to make sure that I'm connecting authentically with my audience on those platforms. I love it. Now you mentioned here, you dropped out of law school. Tell me what was that? I did. I dropped out of law school when my
Starting point is 00:02:02 mom had a relapse of brain cancer and it was just like a wake-up call like in your life to be like, what is the thing that you ultimately want to do? And the question was answered on my end. It's like, I want to be a photographer, but I didn't own a camera. And so that real conversation, like that come to Jesus moment where you're like, wait, what is this girl talking about? She's tripping. You know, it was really like everything I needed to learn, I had learned on the internet and I do think for all intents and purposes, I really was terrible when I started. I had, I not only had, I never started a business, like my parents are immigrants and I didn't grow up with much. And so I didn't know a single person
Starting point is 00:02:37 in my entire life who had ever had a business. So it's not like, you know, uncle John or our neighbor, I can ask him or her questions. It was like, legitimately, I'm trying to become a business. So it's not like, you know, uncle John or our neighbor, I can ask him or her questions. It was like, legitimately, I'm trying to become a creative. Um, I'm trying to build a business. Like, what do I do? And everything I learned was on the internet. And I made a promise to God that I'm like, if I ever become something in my life, I'm going to give back because so many people created free content for me to learn. And I feel like that's just what I'm doing here today. I love it. Love it. You know, tell me what year did you start your company? Well, the first iteration of Jasmine star photography happened in 2000, 2007 was when I filed a DBA and I became like, I'm going to do this, you know, and then it took a few years for
Starting point is 00:03:23 that photography business to really, um scale, became internationally recognized and won awards for our work. And then it was around 2010 that photographers were like, okay, you're a girl who had no idea what was up. You had no experience, you had no connections, but you clearly built a business. So I started teaching photographers how they could build their photography businesses. Cause it's not just about having good photos and it's not, I mean, anything that you do, it's not just about being the best realtor. It's not about being the best cake baker. It's about how are you really, truly growing a business and connecting with people both in person and digitally. And then a few years later, um, when Mike, my, my name started traveling in the education
Starting point is 00:04:01 community, there were other creatives who were like, oh, hey, well, you work with photographers. Would it work with me as a videographer, as a graphic designer, as a makeup artist? Started expanding into that circle. And then all of a sudden, my name becomes synonymous with helping small business owners really take off and market their business and brand. So that's kind of like the timeline of how things unfolded for me. Love it. Take me back that first day when you reached 1 million sales.
Starting point is 00:04:28 Oh. You remember that. Yeah. And the crazy thing was, I didn't even know that that was... Okay. Number one, I didn't know how to dream that big. So there's that. And then two, I didn't even have like the know-how. I wasn't even watching my numbers in that regard. And I think it's so important for you to have like points of demarcation of like, hey, what and when. I don't make any apologies
Starting point is 00:05:00 and I wouldn't go back and change it, but it just wasn't my main focus of, oh, the minute I make a million dollars, apologies and I wouldn't go back and change it, but it just wasn't my main focus of, Oh, the minute I make a million dollars, it was kind of like, can I make this thing work? And for so long, that was the focus. And since then, like once you actually have the wheels on like your business, you start like, well, can this project do a million or can this project do a million in eight months? Like, you know, you start playing with that. But honestly, like in the beginning, I was just like, I don't even know if this can work. I wasn't even focused on that. It was just like, can we survive? Tell me who's the creative side? Who's the,
Starting point is 00:05:34 where did you get that from, from your family? Anyone's so creative. Like I'm looking at your photos. The branding is on point. I love it. Where do you get that creativity from? I definitely get it from a mix of both my parents. Like my mom was, is very, very, very creative, very independent. And my dad is like an immigrant, not like an immigrant, not like an immigrant. He is an immigrant. He's from Mexico. My mom is from Puerto Rico and they met here in East Los Angeles. And I think that there, there is like classical creativity in what my mom possessed, right? She, she has like a very strong sense of style and self. She's also an actress and singer. She was always like always creative. She's like anything you put in her hand, she could do something. And my dad will not
Starting point is 00:06:19 necessarily classically creative. I would say that he's a social creative. He knows how to talk to anybody in a room. He knows how to make people feel seen. He's a fantastic storyteller. So I do think that between the blend of both of them was kind of where I got like a kind of like hard knock street version of creativity. Love it. Love it. Now, Jasmine, what was the most challenging experience that you've had to overcome while running a company? I mean, we could be here all day. Like I just was talking to somebody before and I said, you know, 98% of my business is a long string of like what people would consider failures. And oftentimes the thing that people see is the 2%. And you know, to any, to my fault, I'm like chief transgressors. Like what we put out on social is the things that we want people know, to any, to my fault, I'm like chief transgressors. Like what we put
Starting point is 00:07:05 out on social is the things that we want people to see. And that is maybe 0.01% of all reality. And so, you know, we could talk about how, um, oh goodness, like I had 10,000 people. I just, I put together a class. I'm like, I'm just going to try teaching a class online. We had 10,000 people sign up for this class. And then somebody on the team and everything, anything that happens on the team, anything that happens with anybody, it all comes back to me. I don't point fingers because they're all pointing back to me. I did not ensure that we had upgraded to facilitate 10,000 people on the class. So you could just imagine it's like we're 10 minutes into the class and I only, I just see 99, just 99 attendees. And I was like, something just doesn't feel right right now. And like my husband, he's my business
Starting point is 00:07:49 partner. I see him off to the side. He's not on camera, but he's like clacking away on his keyboard. And I'm just waiting to be like, when is the ax going to fall? Like, when are you going to tell me right now that this is just like a hot mess? And so it's just like, just those things, you know, it's like, obviously like there were times where you have to let a team member go and you look back and you're like, man, I should have done it differently. I should have done it better. There have been times where you're like, I think we bit off more than we can chew. And then you're out like you're hustling.
Starting point is 00:08:11 There are times you fall flat on your face when you think that your big product or promotion is going to like slay. And then it's like dead in the water and you're like, oh snap, how do we bounce back from that? So it's like all the things in all the ways I would, and I'm open to talk about that because I think it's something that a lot of people don't talk about, but it is predominantly how most businesses function, but we just don't show it. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:08:34 With 10,000 attendee, how many backend people working for you were working that? Oh, so that's, that's the other thing. Like, you know, for the first, for the first 12 years of my business, it was just my husband and I. So, you know, and then, um, so very similar to like you, how you had just mentioned, like your husband does all this stuff that you don't want to do. That was a hundred percent. Like what my husband did in the business, we hired, um, our first team member and she was working part-time. And since then we've grown the team, but it's always been a rather small team.
Starting point is 00:09:10 At the time where we had our first 10,000 person class, I think we might've had five people, like myself, my husband and three other people. So, you know, it's just like everybody's every, it's like, I always use the analogy of like, we're on a ship and the ship on the outside is real pretty and it's fly, you know? And then at the bottom, all of us are like, we're putting our fingers in holes and being like, Oh God, we better not sink. Thank God the team has grown since then. But yeah,
Starting point is 00:09:31 you have to take whatever you can and make it work. Absolutely. Now, how many number of employees do you have now? We have both part-time and full-time. We have 18. 18. Do you utilize outsource or VA as well? No, not at this time. We're really working towards bringing on the entire team as being full-fledged employees. But we, you know, the first time we expanded into a team, everything was all independent contractor. And so it wasn't actually until 2020 that we had a formalized employee program for people who were number one eligible. You have to be working over 32 hours. And then we had to, you know, a lot of times if as an independent
Starting point is 00:10:10 contractor, you can take on other clients. If we bring you on full time, we are taking in all the understanding that you're going to be working with social curator exclusively. Sometimes that fit for people and sometimes it didn't, which is totally cool and understandable. But right now we really want to focus on the culture of the team. And we noticed when we work with a lot of VAs, it's a little segmented. So we want to make sure that the people we bring on, like we all drink the same Kool-Aid. Yeah. And that's so hard to the California law, how they changing that independent contractor. Right. Right. That's a big, right. A massive change. And for us, it took, and you know, we were very forthcoming with everybody on the team and being like, because obviously if they were only working, an independent contractor is
Starting point is 00:10:47 only going to be working, let's say 10 hours a week. It was not compromisable. And as long as they could show they had other clients, it really wasn't in question. But the closer you start getting to like 25 hours, you're kind of like, Hey, are you in, or are you not? And if it's not totally cool, we wish you all the best. We're going to be your biggest supporters, but we can't blur the lines out here specifically in California. Absolutely. Now, does everyone work remotely? Yes. We have always been 100% virtual team. It's been a dream of mine to attract the best talent. And oftentimes we feel a little like, it's just fact of the matter. You're limited by geography. If you're saying everybody has to come into an office. I live a very mobile pre COVID. My husband and I traveled extensively and I always wanted the
Starting point is 00:11:28 lifestyle where I could work from wherever. And we wanted our team to have that and our team to manage their own hours. And so it was a high value for us. And all of a sudden, unbeknownst to us, we were really preparing our team to withstand the pressures of COVID and people changing like their work-life balance for us. We're like, it's another day. It's another day out here hustling. So it was good. It was a good thing for us. Okay. So Jasmine, tell me more about your company. What exactly is Social Curator? Social Curator is a platform for small business owners to build their brand and market it on social media. So what do we provide? Every single month, you have a turnkey marketing plan. This is what we want you to do this month
Starting point is 00:12:05 to market your business. Then we give you 30 caption templates. People are like, I don't know what to say on social media. Well, we give you a way and like a fill in the blank to guide you with what to say so that you're not just selling your business. You're talking and creating authentic relationships. We also have Instagram story templates.
Starting point is 00:12:21 These are all customizable, like, right? Like we want you talking about your business and showing up and being conversational. So we provide the tools for you. And we also have a gallery of lifestyle images for people who are like, I don't know what to post today. What are you feeling like? Are you drinking coffee? Are you drinking tea? Are you by the beach? Are you in the mountains? You can go into your library of images, search for it, then have things to post and know what to say. Love it. Now, how do you handle with clients that expect those posts to convert and algorithm change all the Now, how do you handle with clients that expect those posts to convert
Starting point is 00:12:45 and algorithm change all the time? How do you handle that? So for us, we are not a digital agency. So we don't have clients per se. We don't work one-on-one. We have members and we adhere to personal accountability. So for instance, if there is an algorithm change, we don't have people come back to us like, it's not converting. We come back and we're like, this is the system that we use. This is the education that we provide. And then we are always on the cusp of what's going on. So just at the time of this recording, what we're going to be focusing on is how Instagram changed the layout. They're prioritizing reels. They're prioritizing the shop button. So we have to make sure as business owners, we're creating the resources for people to know how to use the shop button.
Starting point is 00:13:23 And also we notice a big shift in the way that Instagram is displaying guides. So just today, I had a conversation with our social creator manager. I'm like, we need to create a resource for guides. We need to have them prepared. We need people to have access to it immediately. We always want to be on the front end of it. Love it. What's your favorite app of all time? Did you have any favorite app of all time? I mean, I'm such a nerd. I love Gmail. I love my Gmail app. Like I just so organized for me. It's clean. Like it makes sense in my brain. I keep it nice and clean. Um, yeah, it's my, my all-time favorite app. Okay. I love it. Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Starting point is 00:13:59 I would have hired a team earlier, like a thousand percent. My mentor always says, if you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go big, take a team. And I was so afraid that like, I wouldn't be able to pay a team. I wasn't sure if I could lead a team. I was like, what if people don't have enough to do? And all of a sudden, like the longer I waited, the more that I made myself the linchpin in my company. Like we couldn't do this because I was a bottleneck. We couldn't do that opportunity because I was the bottleneck. As soon as we started bringing people in, I started realizing that we could step more into a vision. Like I don't care about Jasmine star being satiated. I care about the vision of empowering 10,000 small business owners to make six figures,
Starting point is 00:14:37 like a large percentage of our members are female. What would it look like for this female, probably the first in her family, to be able to drive six figures in her business? It's a game changer for her children. What is her legacy? How is she going to show up for a partner? How is she going to show up differently in the world? The vision is to empower those people to change their home, change their neighborhood, change their city. That's where true change begins is when you have financial freedom to pursue and be the captain of your destiny. Absolutely. I can totally relate to that, that solo entrepreneur in the beginning, I was running this eight figure business in my garage because I was so cheap.
Starting point is 00:15:14 Right. I can't scale this with a six figure mindset. I'm running an eight figure business. Like it's not going to last. Ooh, girl, you had awakening. Good for you. Yep. Yep. So my key is like really work above the business, not in the business.
Starting point is 00:15:31 I love to travel. I would rather be in my laptop and be. That's right. Of course. Shoot. Absolutely. Now, Jasmine,
Starting point is 00:15:40 what are the top two advice would you give to any female aspiring entrepreneur? First and foremost is listen to your gut. Like I wish I had heard that advice and it's so basic and you hear it growing up perhaps, but like your intuition, it's like never wrong. Every time I felt like an inkling and I was just like, I don't know if this is right, but I'm like, no, no, it is. Every time I ignored my gut, I was wrong. And every time there's like this underpinning of knowing, like knowing with a capital K, I know something and it makes no sense. Listen to it. Double down and always bet on that.
Starting point is 00:16:20 And the second piece of advice is jump and the net will appear. It just, there hasn't been a point. When you are built to actually build a business, there's never a point that even when you're in free fall, you're never afraid of like hitting rock bottom. You're afraid of not finding the answer fast enough. And it's just like, but you will never know the pressure of finding the answer until you actually jump, jump.
Starting point is 00:16:41 And the answers will come to you a hundred percent of the time. Love it. Now, how do you manage working with your husband? I know it's very difficult. There are times, how do you manage that relationship to make sure you don't mix that together? How do you, how do you deal with that? So when it comes to working with your partner in business and in life, it's super important for you to have clearly denoted roles and responsibilities. Early on when we were both like, oh, we're going to do this together. It's like we both were doing everything together. And like a two headed horse never survives because the way that he thinks,
Starting point is 00:17:15 which I find very valuable and attractive, but also drives me crazy. Cause I'm like, what are you doing? You know, it's just like when we realized that he had certain projects and certain roles and that I stay out of it. And so we call it the 51% role. If he is in charge of something, he gets 51% say. So even if I'm like, bug, bug, bug, and I disagree, I just, it's like, it's his project. He gets to make the final decision. So there are other projects, like when it comes to branding, if he doesn't think like,
Starting point is 00:17:41 let's say the color pink is good for me, I that's 51%. I get the final call. It has totally been a game changer. I was like, whoever gets a 51% make decision and move on. I love it. Love it. Love it. That's hard. That's hard. It is. What happened? It like that argument really, you know, went to the next day. Like it was, the topic was so intense that it ever happened. Here's the thing, Kate, when my mom had brain cancer, it was, I met my husband when we were in high school. So he grew up with me. Like he saw everything.
Starting point is 00:18:14 Like he saw me gutted when my mom, when I was 23 and he was the one that was helping her and seeing the way that my dad showed up for my mom in such a big way. Like nobody expected my mom to survive. And she did now just because she survived, if I didn't learn the lessons that I was supposed to previous to that, I did my mom's journey a disservice. So what I learned is that dang girl, life is short. Life is so stupid short that if you waste it on something that in a year won't matter today, you're selling yourself short.
Starting point is 00:18:45 And so I am not a marriage guru. I do not have a perfect relationship. But I'm telling you, girl, every night, even if we have like, you know, like Latinas, we can't, we can go ahead to have a pause. I'm like, let me tell you something about you and your mama. Okay, we can go hard. But all I know is that even if, even if I don't feel like it's my fault, my dad said that there are words, five phrases that could change your life, which is, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:19:10 It was my fault. Please forgive me. Can we start again? Anything else you need to tell me? I'm telling you, girl, that is the cheapest therapy. I was like, thank you, daddy. This is the thing that I need to add. Like, even if I'm so frustrated, you say that. And all of a sudden you're just standing there, two people who were hurt,
Starting point is 00:19:28 angry and said stuff you didn't mean. And then you're like, okay, cool. Love it. Now, Jasmine, how did you get into that 400,000? Tell me your top strategy to build your Instagram following. It's listening to what is going on. So at the time of this recording, um, you know, reels debuted a few months ago and then they changed the layout of Instagram or doing what prioritizing reels. It was as if Instagram was telling y'all like, get with the party. Like, we're going to over index what is really popular because they want to go head to head to tick tock. So it was just like, it wasn't that, Oh, like all of a sudden I hit it on reels, not at all. I was like late to the TikTok game, but started up on TikTok. And then all of a sudden when reels dropped,
Starting point is 00:20:13 I was like, Oh, I'm actually prepared for this. But anytime something new came out, IGTV stories, like every time it was first to action, first to action, because those people who are brave enough to look like a fool and do it wrong, they get the lion's share. Because at this point in time, if you're making reels and you're like, oh my God, I'm getting like a thousand views this time in 12 months, you're not going to get that same amount because more people are going to be doing reels to become saturated and not over index. So in my mind, I just want to be the first to do it wrong and do it messy and then fix it along the way.
Starting point is 00:20:42 Cause you get the lion's share of the attention. I love it. So how many times do you do stories in a day? So one or two stories? Oh, I probably average around six stories a day and a day because you want to make sure that like, because stories only last 24 hours, I'm posting them at various times in my day so that people, anytime that somebody is checking in at any given point in time, they're going to be able to see something. I'm always making sure that I'm strategic with the content. I am posting on my feed once a day, and then I can share it to stories.
Starting point is 00:21:13 Again, it's just like a two-pronged approach of what can I, where can I meet people at where they're at right now? Stories disappear in 24 hours. So to me, I don't spend too much time in them because they don't sit in perpetuity. So what I want to do is behind the scenes, silly stuff, pointing things to my business, knowing good and well, they're going to disappear, but reels sits on your feed. IGTV sits on your feed going live. It could sit on your feet. So that's where I'm going to over-index my time to invest in the platform. Love it. Love it. Now, Jasmine, where can they find you? What's
Starting point is 00:21:42 your website hiring your company? Tell me. Thank you. Thank you so much. You can find me on all social platforms at jasminestar and at socialcurator.com. And I have one last question. How do you want to be remembered? Oh, that I gave more than I took. Ah, so sweet. Thank you so much for this opportunity. You're amazing. Thank you so much. I hope to see you one day. We're like not that far. We are not that far. We're Orange County neighbors. So I'm sure we'll see each other at the beach or at the spectrum or a fashion island.
Starting point is 00:22:12 Okay. I know I'm speaking your language. Okay. All right. Bye. Thank you so much. Have a great day. We need to have our husband connect because I'm sure they can relate both.
Starting point is 00:22:20 Oh, no, girl. They're going to sit there and be miserable. We got to keep them apart. We have to have our husbands think that we're amazing. Okay. Thank you, Kate. Take care. Bye. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe and visit katehancock.com so you don't miss out on the next episode.

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