the bossbabe podcast - 10. Popularity VS Profitability, Overcoming Fear of Judgment & How to Live in Your Purpose with Jasmine Star

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

“Follow your heart but take your brain with you.” On this week’s episode, Danielle interviews photographer and founder of Social Curator, Jasmine Star. She dives in to her journey, from dropping out of law school and family struggles to becoming an award winning photographer. Jasmine shares how she got started with photography, how she cultivated her community and the experiences that have allowed her to grow a successful business. Jasmine talks about the tools she used to build a profitable and credible business within her first year without spending any money on marketing. She tells us how receiving awards in her field has impacted her business and talks about the difference between being popular and profitable. They talk about the importance of getting over the fear of being judged and living in your purpose and standing in your passion. Jasmine tells us all about the next social media trends and her top five tips for taking Instagram photos.

I am okay putting a stake in the ground speaking my truth I will either attract you into my orbit or I will repel you I am okay and feel equally the same about both of those things people have opinions about you if you want to be nothing say nothing do nothing make waves. And even when you do that, they will still have an opinion. So if you know that people will have an opinion of you, you do you. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place that we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle, your host of this week's episode. Now I have to say I absolutely loved interviewing

this week's guest Jasmine Starr. Her bubbly personality is literally infectious and it was just so nice to sit down and have this chat. Jasmine has a really interesting story because she started her career studying law. She thought she knew where she was going and what she was going to do but partway through her studies she decided to make a complete U-turn and she decided to become a photographer. I let Jasmine tell her story but now after being voted for as one of the top winning photographers in the world and building a successful business, Jasmine inspired me to pick this quote to summarise this episode. Follow your heart but take your brain with you. I genuinely feel that

the combination of passion in your heart and a willingness to learn and grow is the ultimate mix, whether you are an entrepreneur or climbing the career ladder, if you're passionate about something and put your brain to it, you can't help but succeed. And Jasmine is a true testament to this. Whilst listening to her story, and you'll hear this too, I was reminded that life is short and to follow your heart. And I hope everyone listening is really inspired to do the same. Now, before we dive into this interview, I just want to say a huge thank you to APRE, the sponsors of this episode. APRE is essentially redefining the on-the-go protein shakes. It's the first product of its kind with organic plant proteins, metabolic

fats from organic virgin coconut oil, and electrolytes from organic coconut water. The product was co-founded by Darby, a health coach and personal trainer who realized that a clean, organic, healthy fat protein shake didn't exist. So she did what every Boss Babe would do and she created one. It tastes so good. So if you want to check them out for a post-workout drink or even a healthy snack, head to drinkapri.com and use the code BOSSBABE15 for 15% off. A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome Jasmine to the Boss Babe podcast. It is

such a pleasure to be chatting with you today. I think the pleasure is all mine. Thank you. I love it. I'm so excited for our listeners to get to know you because I know that you're very much like me. You're an open book. You're happy to share your ups and your downs. And I think that's really important. I think everyone's craving that authenticity. And I know you have that in abundance. So I'm really excited about this interview. So I wanted to start the conversation off with who is Jasmine Starr now? Who do you relate to being? I relate first and foremost to being a wife of an amazing, perfect man. Well, he's not perfect, but don't tell anybody, but I personally think he's perfect. I am the daughter of two immigrant parents.

I am the sister of amazing siblings. I am friends with friends who are just truly amazing, beautiful people. And I am a photographer and founder of Social Curator. I love how fondly you spoke to your husband then as well. That's so beautiful. Well, I mean, I make no jokes. I really married out of my league. I love how fondly you spoke to your husband as well. That's so beautiful. Well, I mean, I make no jokes. I really married out of my league. I mean, he's pretty fantastic. People meet him and they're like, wow, Jasmine, how'd you score that one? I'm like, I don't know. Well, actually, I do know. I do know. We met when we were like around 16 years old. He was too young and naive to know what a monster I was. And so, you know, we ended up sticking through it and he's still my very best friend.

Oh, I love that. Have you been together since you were 16? Yes. Oh, that's so romantic. I casually joke with my friends. I'm just so good at picking partners that when I met him, I was like, I'm done. Yeah, this is it. Basically I have a hundred percent score in choosing a partner. So there you go. Oh, that's amazing. So I know like most people will know you being a successful photographer, you know, you're on social media, you have a very successful business. But how did it all start for you? Because from what I read, it was more of a turbulent start. It's not necessarily something

that you went into straight away photography. And I read that you started in law school. I did. I earned a full-ride scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles. I was very excited. As the daughter, like I mentioned, I hail from immigrant parents. My father is from Mexico and my mother is from Puerto Rico and they met in East Los Angeles, which is not exactly blue collar. It would be very, very, very low blue collar workings and humble beginnings for my parents. And then we grew up here in the States, in California with government assistance.

So if you make less than a certain amount of money, the United States considers you living like a low income poverty level. And so we would get food donated to us. Collections at church would be made on our behalf. But as a kid, you don't know any different. You just think, oh, wow, we get food on our porch by our neighbors. You know, you just think it's very normal. And then

I earned a college scholarship for academics and I graduated at the top of my class. And I say those things not because I was particularly smart. I was homeschooled the majority of my life and my mom doesn't have a college education. She barely graduated high school. My dad didn't learn how to read until he was 25. I just think that it says something about my personality to where I'm not exactly intellectual. I'm not the smartest. I'm not the quickest. I'm not the wittiest. I'm not the fastest. I'm not the person in a room where somebody says, hmm, that girl, she's going to go and do something. But I will say that if I lack all of those other things, and I have the belief in persistence, I have somehow found a way to consistently

rise to the top in certain projects or certain opportunities that I've been given. And I think that's the story that led me to law school. And I don't think that I was somebody who was like, oh, she's going to get into a tier one or tier two law school. And I ended up getting into multiple tier one schools. And I ended up choosing to remain in Los Angeles because my mom had an eight-year battle with cancer. Her health was so fragile that I ended up choosing to remain in Los Angeles because my mom had an eight-year battle with cancer. Her health was so fragile that I didn't want to be too far from seeing her if I needed to. And lo and behold, during my first year of law school here in the States, it's three years. During my first year, she had a relapse of brain cancer. And I was just

struck dumb with grief and depression. And it had been such a hard road getting to school. And I was so unhappy there. And then with the illness of my mom, I just said, I need to leave. I need to be with her. The doctors had said her time had come. She'd been battling about eight and a half years at this time. And the doctors had said, we've done everything we can do. It's time to plan her funeral. And it was so hard that I picked up. I left law school. I moved back home to be with my parents. And so there I was 25 years old and she was 50 years old. And I felt like I had a midlife crisis. Like truly, I was so sad. I was such an affront. And I thought to myself, if I have 25 years left in my life, I don't want to die a lawyer. Like that was just it. And the one thing

I did know was that I wanted my mom to see me marry my high school sweetheart. She just loved him. He's so wonderful. Our families just kind of grew together over the years, and we planned a wedding in a little bit less than three months, and the doctor said, oh, she won't be able to fly because we wanted to get married on an island in Hawaii, and she said she won't be able to fly. She won't be able to talk. She won't be able to walk, and against all those odds, my mom and my dad walked me down the aisle, and it was one of the best days of my life. And I think that having her there, she was and has and remains my North Star. Because just this morning, I had a conversation with my mom.

So she beat the odds. She beat every odd that was stacked against her. And I think that it really set a precedent for how I want to live my life. When other people say, it's not going to happen, she decided to doggedly determine with miracles from God, no doubt. She's just a walking miracle. But it forced me to reconcile what do I want to do with my one wild and crazy life. And we just got home from my honeymoon. I got a letter from UCLA and it said that in order for me to reclaim my scholarships, I had to reapply. And there I was about three weeks married. And I am sitting at our tiny dining room table with my brand new husband. And I'm crying because I say, I don't want to go back. I don't know what to do. And so then my

husband says, if you could do one thing for the rest of your life and be happy, what would it be? And I said, I want to be a photographer. And he said, okay, but you don't own a camera. I was like, I know, but if I had a camera, like I think I can make a go at it. And that was in 2005. In Christmas, 2005, I unwrapped a very simple camera, but 2005 was like one of the hardest years of my life. And I told my husband that I didn't want to open the camera in 2005. I wanted to open the camera on January 1st, 2006, because it was a new year and it was a new opportunity to do something that I wanted to pursue. And he said, listen, just give it one year. He's like, try to pursue photography for one year. And if it doesn't work out, you have one last remaining year to reclaim your scholarship. So law school was like

plan B. And I was like, okay. So I took a part-time job, picked up a camera. And then by 2009, I was one of the top photographers in the world. Amazing. What a story. I had a lump in my throat when you were talking about your mom. And I think when you go through something like that, it just puts things in perspective. And we talk a lot on the podcast about fear, fear of action. Sometimes, you know, people want to do things, but they don't really know where to start because they're fearful of starting and they feel like they have to be perfect at something before they start. But I truly think that sometimes when you realize how fragile life is, it puts things in perspective and you think, why am I worried about

that? What is the worst that can happen? And when you start realizing that the worst that can happen and when you start realizing that the worst that can happen is okay you might not be very good at it you might need to pivot someone might laugh at you it actually just puts things in perspective actually it's not life or death and life is so fragile and we're here once and I just think hearing you speak about that just I just think it's a lesson for all of us to remember isn isn't it? We get one chance at this and we deserve to be happy and we deserve to take those leaps that make us happy. So thanks for sharing that story. Oh, thank you. Just to kind of close the loop on something you had said, you had said we're so afraid to start because we don't know where. Well, darling, nobody does.

Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible.

I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. There's this fallacy that we believe some people have a secret or a code or some divine insight into where to start. The people who actually are in successful positions or we look to aspirationally, they didn't know where to start, but they started. They were the 2% of people who started, made mistakes, restarted, pivoted, started, and continued every iteration of their business to start. So if you're afraid to start because you don't know where, you are not a special snowflake. We all are trying to figure it out as we go. So take any action. Because even what you perceived is the wrong action, well, that got you closer to the right action. Take action, any action, gritty action, scrappy action, wrong action, good action, amazing

action. Any action is better than no action at all. I love that. It's so right. And I think, like you say, just take action, do something because it might be, but by trying something, you get closer to actually what you want to do. I find it interesting though, that you were so dead set on photography and actually you've been very, very successful at doing that. But what made you even think to become a photographer when you didn't even own a camera? Was it like an intuition? Had you met a

photographer that had inspired you? Like actually connected the dots in that capacity. Amazing. So I went to a small private liberal arts college in Los Angeles. And the interdisciplinary studies, we were required to take a litany of classes that we wouldn't otherwise outside of our discipline. I ended up earning a degree in business, but they made me take a bunch of science classes and math classes and, you know, acting. And one of the classes I had to take was a sociology class. And this one class that was offered every other year, once a semester, it was able to lock in a seat. And I felt so thankful because it was a sociology through photography. And I had

borrowed a film camera and I developed my own film while I was in school. And like our school, they called it like a photography department, but it was literally a storage closet that had been converted into a dark room. And so I would buy my own film. I would develop my own film. And at the end of the semester, the stories we were able to document with our cameras were put up in a small little like art studio there on campus. And I just remember feeling absolutely free and empowered. And it was so gratifying to see the work that I poured my heart into on display. And I think as a first generation American, as a first generation college student,

I didn't feel like I had the wherewithal to tell my parents like, hey, I want to be an artist, like all your sacrifices to get me here. Like I want to be starving. And in my mind, you were only an artist and you were struggling. I didn't think of the world in a transactionary sense that like artists could also be business people. And later in life, that would ultimately guide me to that point. And I couldn't be more thankful. That's so true as well. Sometimes people think in just left brain or right brain, but there is an element where you can be both. And if you can't be both, then you hire someone who's the opposite to you, right? You can make it work. I love that. So I want to just touch

on a part because I feel like we skimmed past it, but it needs more recognition. Within a few years of starting, you actually became an award-winning photographer. How did that happen? You know, okay. So I'm very familiar with the Boss Babe community. And so I want to 100 share my story. And I know that within the community, there are artisans and craftswomen who will hear what I have to say, and then they'll be appalled. I can't believe she's saying that.

And guess what? I'm okay with that. I am okay putting a stake in the ground, speaking my truth, understanding that I will only do one of two things. I will either attract you into my orbit or I will repel you. I am okay and feel equally the same about both of those things. I never want to be lukewarm. It's the people who remain lukewarm and want to be accepted and loved by everybody are those who are the quickly forgotten. So I am going to talk

and share how I created a business and became an internationally recognized award winning photographer, it was because I created an experience and I built a brand. I was not the best photographer. And boy, oh boy, did I hear it. Starting in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, there was a whole uprising of classically changed photographers who would look at my work and just tear it to shreds. It's terrible. The lighting's off. Look at the contrast.

Look at the hues. Her coloring's off. Does she not understand? And all those years, I kept on raising my prices, raising my prices, raising my prices, and people were aghast. How could this untrained girl from the hood who has no business sense and no right to be out there taking photos running a successful business?

And I quickly understood early on that the industry back in 2007, 2008 was strongly dominated by an old sense of hierarchy and this is the way that it's done. And then digital media, like social media and digital marketing really hit a stride around 2010. I created a blog and photographers were like, what does a blog have to do with being a photographer? And that quickly marked how I was able to attract, I spent zero money marketing my business. People were paying me $10,000 to $15,000 to be shooting their weddings in Italy, in Canada, in Costa Rica. We were flying around the world. We were working with editors. We were at the top of the game and people are like, you don't deserve to be there. And I wasn't offended. I looked across them and said, I know, but I am. And along the way,

I shared everything I knew to every photographer who asked. I put it on my blog. I created videos. I shared, I shared, I shared, I shared. And when people talk like, how did you get to that point? I created valuable content. I build trust for my clients. They spread my name because they didn't feel like a transactionary event with me. I wasn't just a wedding photographer. I wasn't just working with an art director or an editor. In that moment, I was there to serve them and leave them with such a good taste in their mouth that they're like, I have to share this woman. I have to share her work. I have to connect with other people. That is how I built my business with no money and then was able to really build a profitable business within my first year. There are so many lessons and takeaways in there.

Honestly, that was so invaluable. One thing I want to ask you though, because I find quite interesting. So I get what you're saying about people loving you and people disliking you actually that being a good thing. But what do you think has allowed you to have that mindset that that's okay? Because I feel like a lot of people listening just don't like to think that people don't like them and they do try and please everybody. So is that something that you have always embodied or is it something that as you've got older and as you've built your business, you've learned to become more resistant to? And is there anything that you practice that helps you do that? For example, I've always struggled with being a bit of a people pleaser

and now I have mantras around it. So I've built my resilience up, you know, not necessarily being liked by everyone by having mantras around that, that I look at when I am feeling vulnerable or low in confidence. Have you had to do any of that? I strongly spent probably somewhere like 30 years of my life trying to please people, trying to fit in. Unbeknownst to me, what happens as a child in the way that I was framed is like, I was always on the periphery. I wore somebody else's clothes, like we couldn't afford to buy our own clothes. We had our food donated to us. I always worried that I was the odd man out there. People can look at me and be like, she's different.

And I think that my whole life, I aspired to go unnoticed. Growing up, I didn't want to be noticed as the girl who looked different than everybody else. I also grew up obese, so I was very big, and as a result of being very big as a child, you're always selected and noticed in a room, and so I wanted to please everybody. I wanted to be forgettable. I didn't want to stand out, and then I had a really great conversation with my father, and he sat me down down and he told me, if you don't want to be anybody, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. People will have an opinion about you regardless of how hard you try for them not to have an

opinion of you. If you think you're doing everything perfectly, there's going to be somebody who looks across and be like, I don't like the way she does it. I don't like the way he does it. I don't like she talks. I don't like the way she looks. I don't like the way that he teaches. So in my mind, it was like a light bulb went off and I was like, oh my God, regardless of my behavior, somebody's still going to have an opinion. So why not stick a flag in the ground and say, this is who I am. This is who I serve. I understand you might not like me. I bless and release all of that because I could sit back in the shadows of my fears and my doubts, hiding inside of my house, afraid to put anything out online for fear of what people will think. Guess

what? People are thinking something about you anyway. At the grocery store, at the post office, as you pick your kids up from school, people have opinions about you. If you want to be nothing, say nothing, do nothing, make no waves. And even when you do that, they will still have an opinion. So if you know that people will have an opinion of you, you do you. You're serving your highest self and you're living to your maximum capacity. It's so true. And I think that society now, we are surrounded by social media.

I think this is showing up for a lot of people right now, that whole feeling that they are constantly being judged and there's no way to get away from it. You know, when we were at school, we didn't have mobile phones. And when you went home, you were on your own and you had your own privacy in your house. And you wouldn't, in that moment, you could think you weren't being judged, even if you were. But I think now social media has accentuated that. And I think that actually for us to grow up or survive now in the culture that we're in, we have to become resistant and we have to look within ourselves, like you were just saying, like an owner and just be like, well, do you know what? Someone's always going to have an opinion whether I do something or not. So I might as well do it and try and make myself happy than not doing anything at all. So very, very powerful. So again, I feel like

I wanted to ask you around the awards and we have touched on a little bit, but one thing I was interested in is how that actually impacted your business. Because we talk a lot within the society, which was our membership about building credibility. And there were so many ways to build credibility, but I do believe that having awards is one of those ways. And also there's a lot of stigma around whether you nominate yourself for award or whether you get some people to nominate for your award or whether actually you just wait to get spotted and get that award. And so I wondered what the situation was with you and actually how you felt that impacted your business.

Did you see it improve from those awards? Oh my gosh. Okay. So again, the tiny voice in my mind is like, oh, I wonder what she's going to think about your answer because I'm not quite sure if it aligns quite closely to the hypothesis. I do agree to a certain extent that awards are transformative in a business. Were they transformative in my business? The answer is zero. No. They did elevate me in the esteem of fellow photographers, but they weren't the people that were hiring me for events or

photo shoots. So in that regard, it was fine. I loved it. I was honored. But working and serving the clientele I was working, it didn't matter to them specifically because photography, and you could substitute the word photography for any other creative element that requires a person's thumbprint on the end product or service, is that I was selling a highly sophisticated product to a highly uneducated audience. Now, my audience isn't dumb. They're all bright, successful, amazing doctors, lawyers, like CPAs. Okay. But the fact of the matter is people look at a photo and they appreciate it for what

it is. But as a photographer, there's so many nuances to it that the awards that were given were for like nuances and quality and experience. All of these things that people, my end user, my customer, my client didn't understand. So while it looked nice on my website, that was not the defining factor. If they were choosing between me and another high-end photographer, they're not like, you know what? This award right here.

No, it was how did I show up for them? How was the conversation? How did they go? And, you know, at the end of the day, it does look great as a veneer, but it didn't have any bearing whatsoever on how many clients I was booking as a result. I love that. And I think, thank you for sharing that as well, because again, when we come back to this confidence piece, sometimes people feel that they need to have these things to be

successful or X, Y, and Z makes them successful. One thing we talk about a lot is how many followers you have on social media does not determine your, and I'm going to put it in quotation marks, success, because we can also chat about what success means, right? But I do think there are these vanity metrics in all fields. And actually, you know, what is it that matters? Well, what matters is satisfying your customers

and pleasing your customers and giving value to your customers. So I agree with your takeaway. I think in some businesses, it can really, really transform it. And others, like you say, it doesn't have an impact to the end user. So it's just, I mean,

this in a very polite way, a vanity metric, right? It's nice to get the pass on the back and there's nothing wrong with those vanity metrics, but it is interesting how they actually do impact the bottom line of your business. Absolutely. There is one of my favorite quotes by Dale Carnegie, and it's something very similar to this. It's like, your business will go farther having two people genuinely interested in what you

do than trying to get 200 people interested in what you do. And I think that that parlays very well years later with social media is that so often so many of us are looking at our followers as if they are the people who define us. But I have come now to really say that your Instagram account will go farther with a thousand people who are genuinely interested and engaged with what you're putting out than trying to get 10,000 followers for some vanity metric. I have seen people with very small Instagram accounts do six figures a year. And then we see these mega Instagrammers who are not even closing 30. There's a difference of being popular and profitable. If you are looking to learn how to be popular in Instagram, I am not the coach, teacher, guide for you. If you're looking out

to run a profitable business, leveraging a group of wildly inspiring followers who want to know and learn from you and hear from you and buy your products, well then, hey, we can have a conversation. But to me, I never lead with followers because Instagram can be gone tomorrow. Facebook can be gone tomorrow. And then what are you left with? If you don't have a business behind it, you don't have anything. So what are your tips for building a business? Obviously, you grew your business and scaled it very quickly.

What do you attribute that to? I attribute it to creating content and creating content on platforms that were my own. So I started off as a blogger. I was blogging five or six days a week and during the peak, now I understand that was like a renaissance. That was something new. It was different. I was getting anywhere between 20 and 25,000 unique views a day on my blog. And I did that by creating content, content for my end client, the people who are booking me as a photographer, and then content also in regards to my personal life because I was building a personal brand. And this was, yes, where I was going on vacation, when I got a new puppy, all of those things that people thought were unconsequential to my business actually became foundations to them. And then thirdly,

creating content for people in my field, free content I was just putting out because for years and years and years, I didn't know that I was doing this. And I looked back and said, oh, this is how it played out in my business. I was just creating free content to establish myself as an authority and a trustworthy figure in a very saturated industry. I have still kept that pattern up today, but then made iterations as Twitter was introduced and YouTube was introduced and YouTube was introduced and Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest. I am still creating content in the same capacity, but then slightly changing the content so that it's suitable for each of those platforms. My biggest thing is like when I see somebody who has like, oh, 500,000

followers on Instagram, and then they have like 5,000 followers on Facebook, or they don't really have a big newsletter list. To me, that is not a balanced business. You never want to put too much of an Easter egg in your basket. You want to have like six small eggs instead of one big one because that's called diversifying your marketing efforts and it makes you long-term sustainable

and a viable option as an entrepreneur should your business ever in the future get acquired. Very true. I like that. Like spreading the business is really important. I agree. Like you say, having those different platforms. So how has your business evolved over the time that you've had it? Oh, I love this question. This is this interview girlfriend. I mean, I'm just going to give you a slow clap right now. Okay. So started creating content for photographers around 2010. At the time,

it was brand new. Like this is like, God, I think sometimes like when I'm 80 or 90, I'm going to tell my great grandchildren that I lived through the equivalent of like the gold rush or the roaring forties, because this is truly the wild west. Like we're making up the rules as we go along. It's just such a powerful place to be as human beings that we, with no money, truly, no education, truly, no resources. I never even knew a single person in my life

who had ever started a business. And then there I was within the first year and a half of my business and I had created a six-figure revenue stream. What the heck? This is amazing, right? So it's like, all of a sudden, everybody's trying all these new things. And so it was around 2010 that an organization called Creative Live, they started saying, we're streaming online education. Would

you like to come and teach? And I was like, sure, I'll come teach photography. What we did in the summer of 2010 is we trended on Twitter. We broke Ustream and we had over 20,000 people watching live as I did a photography shoot. Not because I was unique or not because I was special or cute or fun. It was, this was brand new. It had never been done. And I think that that was like the big first iteration to really position me as an authority in the photography world. And from then I started creating online resources for photographers, like just PDFs that people can download and videos on my own. I was just trying to like figure out how can I scale my business and then business owners outside of photography. So around 2014, 2013, 2014, business owners who were in the creative

field said, we see what you're doing with photographers. Do you think that it would work for us? And of course, the imposter syndrome comes up. Like, who am I to teach this? There are other people like I'm not enough. And then I was like, well, let me just start seeing if I can do consulting on the side and see if my strategies would work for business owners. And they did. They were not just even met with like similar success, but like a jaw dropping, astounding, amazing success. And then what I realized was the thing I loved about creating content online was that it was scalable and I was meeting a lot of people's,

like helping them in their journey. And when it came to consulting, which I did for a couple of years, I just felt like I was only working with one person and guiding them to their success. And it was wonderful, but it wasn't scalable. And he realized this is not where I'm the most happy. And where I'm the most happy is connecting with a lot of people, pushing people, keeping

them accountable and saying, this is how you do it, guys. And so then in 2017, we launched, and I say we, my husband is my business partner. We launched Social Curator. And this was the marrying of everything I loved in my life. I am a writer. I started off as a blogger. So regardless if people consider me a writer, I'll just name it and claim it. So every month, part of our monthly social media membership is we create lifestyle photos

for business owners to show up every day online. We create 30 lifestyle photos so that every single day you don't have an excuse as a business owner to show up and talk about your business. Now, I didn't say sell your business. We're branding. We're creating experiences. We're building personal relationships to get your followers engaged. And then we include a monthly marketing plan. And so it's like everything that I love to do with my life. I love to write. I love to empower. I love to shoot. I love to strategize. And all of a sudden it became this community that has really revolutionized the thing that I love to empower. I love to shoot. I love to strategize. And all of a sudden it became this community that has really revolutionized the thing that I love doing. I'm living in my purpose. I'm

standing in my passion and I'm empowering other people to show up on social media. It's like, oh wow, this is it. Like this is where I'm supposed to be right now. So from what I'm picking up in your story is you are very good at spotting trends. You are an early adopter of blogging. You are probably a very early adopter in social media. What do you think is going to be the next trend? What are you looking out for in your business to grow? Okay. So thank you for noticing. I was just thinking about that today in yoga this morning. I was like, I need to really own the fact that I am a pattern spotter, a big believer in where everybody else is going,

run the opposite direction. I like to play in the smaller margins because there's bigger returns there. And like months ago, okay, so IGTV came out as an estimate early year of 2018. And people were like, this doesn't work. And then I saw people doing polls like, do you use IGTV? No one's ever on it. And then I have it on film. I put it on YouTube and I put it on Facebook because I couldn't put it on Instagram. But I was like, y'all, IGTV is going to be the thing. And I started taking polls with my audience like, do you want to see the videos in horizontal or in vertical formats? Hands down, everybody wanted to see it in vertical. So starting from the summer of 2018, I started making content

specifically for IGTV, even though nobody was really there. And I kept on saying, you guys, double down here. Like Instagram has not invested millions of dollars to simply say, oh, you know what? It's not working. No, they're fighters. Like they know that video is the future. And so they're going to amend their platform to ensure that people are seeing it because they knew that IGTV was like an app within an app and people weren't going to the sub app. And so they're going to amend their platform to ensure that people are seeing it because they knew that IGTV was like an app within an app and people weren't going to the sub app. And so they outright said, we're not going to put long form video on the platform because it's going to ruin the experience. Well, a couple months ago, February 2019, IGTV can now be linked from your profile to your channel. And you can only watch 60 seconds on your feed and then you have to click to go over to IGTV.

So I was putting out videos on IGTV and I was getting anywhere between like 8,000 and 9,000 views, which is fine, but considering how many followers I had, it didn't really measure up. And then the minute that they integrated the capacity for people to watch in the feed, the views went up to around 30 to 35,000 per video. I noticed the pattern and I hate saying I like it makes me feel icky, but I know that I have to start saying what's true. Oh, nuts. I know. I know. So, I mean, I do feel like with the platforms, going back to the question, is why I feel so strongly about where the platforms are right now.

Is there isn't a strong contender right now that's shaking things up. And this is coming from somebody who downloaded Marco Polo. It was started off with Ask Whale, who got into all the other new social apps. And I'm like, OK, it's not really hitting. I believe we have a good 48 months left in Facebook and Instagram. Like really, really, really. Like I definitely seen a massive drop on my Facebook page. I know that that was coming. I know now you have to pay to play, but guess what? Instagram is going to be there. Instagram is going to be pay to play in

like 12 to 14 months without a shadow of a doubt. The writing's already on the wall. They're going to shrink organic reach because they can't, they have over a billion users. And then if you want to get your posting, you're going to have to start promoting them. That's going to be the name of the game. This is the trend of every social platform. And this is something that we have to understand going into it. However, whatever you can do now, create so much content to maximize your average 4% to 6% organic reach. And if it have something hot, you can get up to 10 to 12%. That's where you need to be right now. And I am deploying a LinkedIn strategy in 2019, getting really serious about that. Again, we're exactly the same. Natalie has a complete eye for

social media. I'm more the operations kind of head, but she's created this incredible Instagram course as well, just because it is how to allow people to tap into it. But also you're so right with looking at other strategies as well, like LinkedIn and looking at different places. And I think you have to ride the waves, but you also have to look ahead of the wave and go, okay, what's my plan after this? And I think that is super, super powerful. So I have another question for you. I was like, well, I'm thinking I have a photographer, an award-winning photographer on here. I want to ask her some questions about taking Instagram photos because we have spoken about it a lot. And I do know that a lot of people

are like, oh, what do I post? Or like, what is good light? Or what angles do I do? So what are your top five tips for taking Instagram photos, Jasmine? Oh, I love this. Okay. So if listeners are visual learners, I get asked this question all the time. On IGTV, on YouTube, I have created visual tutorials on explaining. This is an audio format. So I'm going to do my best to describe what I'm saying. When it comes to describing good light, and that is my number one tip.

If you are a novice photographer or you're just rocking your iPhone and no diss on the iPhone, I shoot a lot of my Instagram photos on the iPhone, so good on us. Good light would be described as something being illuminated by the sun. Now, you don't have to stand in the sun. In fact, I encourage you not to. The best light will come when the sun is out, but you're standing in shade, standing in the shade of a building, standing in the shade of a tree, or standing indoors with the light source coming from an open door or a window.

That light is gonna be the most complimentary light. People often ask, I do an Instagram Live every single week, and I literally put my phone up on my kitchen window. I do a Facebook Live every week, and I open up my laptop right in front of an open door. I don't pay for... People always ask, what lighting rig do you use? And I'm like, the sun.

Yeah, yeah. You know, that really expensive one. So that is truly finding good light. The second tip would be to focus on something that is called the rule of thirds. And this means that your subject, a flower, your dog, yourself, is placed in one third of the frame. Oftentimes, most people will take a picture and make sure that the object, the person, the thing is smack center. But if you were to actually look at your Instagram feed and everything would be smack center, visually, it's not as appealing as if you make your eye work for what to focus on.

So if you were to divide a photo into three equal parts and then you were to divide the photo horizontally on three equal parts, what you would be looking at is nine square grid. That is also, if you notice, what Instagram shows us. Why? It's visually stunning from an artistic perspective and innate how we are programmed as humans to look at things and find beauty. So you wanna make sure that your object

is in one of the thirds. Now, you can absolutely have things that are centered. In fact, you should, But the variance is really important. Upper third, lower third, right third, left third. These are all things just to kind of take into consideration. Also, when you think about colors, when you are, let's say, like in the morning, if you want to take a photo of your coffee, you want to make sure that you don't have like a purple polka dot napkin next to a silver spoon and like a black cup.

Visually, that doesn't go well. I commonly refer to a silver spoon and like a black cup. Visually, that doesn't go well. I commonly refer to a color wheel. You can actually just Google color wheel and you'll see colors that are next to each other on the color wheel or across from each other are complementary. There's a reason why things that are green match really well with whatever the opposite side

of the color wheel is. And then also when it comes to another photography tip, we would really be thinking about lifestyle. What is going to show who you are and how you spend your time? People have noticed that photos on Instagram perform 67% better with people in them than if people are not in them. And we have seen this. I coach our business owners all the time that a mediocre selfie is better than a perfectly coiffed, perfectly styled photo.

Why? Because people want to see who you are. And I think that the minute we lead with who we are, it helps us stick out. And we know this. We implicitly know that when we get to see people on Instagram, we're intrigued a little bit more. And the minute you intrigue somebody on Instagram, there's a higher likelihood of them liking and engaging. We create that authenticity, don't we? Absolutely.

I love those tips. And I didn't know about Instagram in that nine grid. So that's interesting. They're actually very smart, doll. They are. Who'd have thought? I know. And you know, like a couple of years ago, I'm such a nerd. I'll geek out about Instagram all day. I'll geek out about social. I just feel it is the truest and utmost revealing of human nature that has existed digitally. I mean, it's fascinating to me that like social media exposes who we are. Like we've always been this way. And now we have an opportunity to really showcase these behaviors. And I'm fascinated. My husband says I should have been either a sociologist or a psychiatrist. Like I just love human behavior.

A couple of years ago, they had tested a 12 square grid. They beta tested it. They never did a full rollout because people are like in arms about it. They're like, no, this doesn't work. And so again, it goes back to what do we find is beautiful? How do we understand the world? And then making sure that Instagram is playing to those roles has been pretty wild and fun to see. Well, thank you so much for finishing with those tips, Jasmine. Honestly, this interview has been incredible. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. And thank you for opening up and being so authentic and sharing your stories. It's been amazing. And I've taken notes myself. So thank you for that. I am so honored. You have no idea. I was so excited when we got introduced

and you're like, would you like to be on the podcast? I was like, would I? So thank you. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review. Let us know what you enjoyed,

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