Latest / The Jasmine Star Show / The Exercise that Changed My Business | Reflections on my Experience in Stanford’s Latino Business Action Network Program

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The Exercise that Changed My Business | Reflections on my Experience in Stanford’s Latino Business Action Network Program · The Jasmine Star Show

• 0:14
  Welcome to another episode of the Jasmine Star Show. I am your host, Jasmine Star, and today giving you a little sneak peek behind the scenes.
• 0:22
  Let's get behind the curtain of what's going on in my life or virtually in real time. And it's gonna come in tiny different pieces.
• 0:31
  I'm actually creating this podcast in a series of steps because I don't want to just record a retrospective like what Brene Brown refers to as gold plated grit.
• 0:42
  This is where we go through something and then when we talk about it with other people only having gone through it, we look back and we're like, oh, so we did this really hard thing and this is the things I've learned.
• 0:55
  That's a lot easier than actually being in the thing, talking about what you're going through and then sharing what it is you learned.
• 1:04
  And so on the podcast, if you've been listening for the past two or three months, you might have heard me mention, I've been going through a business scaling program at Stanford University through the Latino Action Business Network.
• 1:17
  I am in the final week of it, y'all.
• 1:20
  I am in the final week of this program, and I have to tell you, I'm so dang thankful, , like I have loved this program. I it has, it's been great. I am just so exhausted, y'all, I'm so exhausted.
• 1:33
  In theory, I knew what I was getting into. They said, Hey, you're going to need around eight to 10 hours a week to complete the assignments and go through our webinars and go through the education and meet with your mentor and do additional classes.
• 1:44
  They said that, and I'm like, yeah, I think I can do this. Of course I can do this. And I did it, but oh my gosh, I am so excited to get my weekends back.
• 1:57
  I am so excited not to walk around because here's the thing, y'all, I was homeschooled. Uh, formal education has always been this luxurious thing.
• 2:04
  I feel like the story I have around education was that I'm doing it wrong and I'm just gonna take it as it comes.
• 2:10
  And this program has really heightened what it means to be pursuing education as an adult. So before I get there, I should probably talk to you about how I discovered this program.
• 2:20
  Many times people will ask, well, how do you find a mastermind?
• 2:23
  How do you find educational programs?
• 2:25
  How do you connect with other people who are doing the thing that you want?
• 2:28
  And I have to tell you, I know this answer is not gonna suffice, but it's the only one I have y'all social media.
• 2:34
  I know people are gonna roll their eyes. I get it, y'all.
• 2:38
  But I was reached out to, I actually have the date right here, May 18th. May 18th, 2021.
• 2:47
  I got a message from a woman by the name of Christina Cordero. Now, we had sent Instagram messages back and forth.
• 2:54
  She had sent me four Instagram messages in 2020.
• 2:59
  Okay?
• 3:00
  So it's not like we were at all like regular chatters in the dms. Not at all.
• 3:05
  Like she sent me congratulations.
• 3:05
  When we had adopted Luna, she had, uh, expressed her concern for what was going on in Puerto Rico and Cuba at different times. And she's just talking about how she could support other business owners.
• 3:18
  And then I didn't hear from her for almost a year. And then on May 18th, she responds to a story and she said, have you heard of the Latino Business Action Network?
• 3:27
  It's an organization that has a scaling program for Latino entrepreneurs at Stanford. I highly recommend it.
• 3:33
  I went through it and it has helped my business immensely. And I was like, okay.
• 3:38
  So I just responded, can I get a link? She sends me a link.
• 3:42
  Now she said it was a life-changing program.
• 3:45
  They have tons of networking and capital access opportunities.
• 3:48
  And then she gave me the email address of someone by the name of Elon to connect with. Okay, so here's where the crazy thing happened.
• 3:57
  I email back in May, I email in June and I don't hear anything. And I'm like, oh, I guess it's not meant to be.
• 4:03
  And then I get a response in July and I was guided to how to apply for the program.
• 4:11
  I got into the program and they made sure that I knew what I was getting into.
• 4:16
  Let's go back to that eight to 10 hours a week. Oh, I, I definitely thought I knew, and I have to tell you that I didn't know what to expect.
• 4:24
  There is one thing being cognizant of an idea or an expectation and then there's something entirely else. And that is going through the thing.
• 4:32
  So when people ask, well, what did you expect going into the program?
• 4:35
  I have to say, I don't know.
• 4:35
  I'm gonna be quite honest.
• 4:38
  2021 has been a year of wild, wild highs and wild, wild lows. And throughout this time, I'm still trying to figure out what it means to balance being a mom and being an entrepreneur.
• 4:51
  I have just barely been in this home for a year.
• 4:56
  And throughout this year we still have ongoing construction projects and balancing personal issues with my family, personal issues with friendships, professional and personal issues With my business, it's been a lot.
• 5:10
  So when people are like, what did you expect? I will tell you, I had no space in my life or my mind to set an expectation.
• 5:17
  I was just like, the whole year has been, if there is an open door, I'm gonna walk through it. This door literally came to me, I knocked, it was open and I was like, okay, here we go.
• 5:27
  I knew I needed something to shift my thinking.
• 5:30
  And I have to tell you that is exactly what this program did.
• 5:34
  So the description of a first day through the L Bend program is you are paired up with a mentor and this happens before you actually meet in person.
• 5:42
  So you meet your mentor and then you get into an online community.
• 5:46
  This is where the communities, most of the conversations are happening.
• 5:49
  So think of this almost as like a forum. You get to ask questions, you get to meet other people, you get to share resources, you get to see where people are in their business and the pressure points of their business. It was all really fascinating. And California. Now, I know that I could have gone to Palo Alto by myself for the three days of this event, except for the fact that I really wanted to go with my husband, who's my business partner and my daughter.
• 6:10
  I knew I wasn't going to be seeing them very much, but just their proximity to who I was becoming meant something to me.
• 6:17
  So JD was all in. We took the baby, we figured out how to balance it all.
• 6:21
  And I went to school during the day and then at night we tried our very best to have dinner together. And on the first day I was very nervous.
• 6:30
  I am a nervous person.
• 6:32
  Like I'm not the time person who's just gonna walk up to people and be an extrovert. So I kind of stood on the periphery. I was watching, I was trying my best to make introductions, but And so I was just like, let me just wait in line for some coffee.
• 6:44
  And so it's in the coffee line that I started meeting people.
• 6:48
  And then we walked into the Stanford Graduate School of Business and we had our name tags out in placards and our seats were assigned to us.
• 6:56
  And I was like, oh my gosh, I felt like I was in a high budget. Second grade, I was like, there is a folder with the Stanford logo emblazoned on it. Like, come on, you got a Stanford pen and paper. I was like, oh, we fancy, your girl had now made it.
• 7:10
  They brought in these amazing professors to speak and share.
• 7:14
  And then they said, okay, well we're meeting in four days.
• 7:19
  And so here is a pile of homework and reading and milestones that you have to get done. And I am telling you, I was like, oh my God, I got hit by Mack Truck.
• 7:27
  It was Sunday.
• 7:28
  This is after two and a half long days of just massive intensive collegiate style education on scaling a business. And they're like, okay, all this has to be done by Wednesday when we meet. And I'm like, huh?
• 7:39
  And then in between that you have to meet with your mentor before you get to that webinar. And I'm thinking to myself, it is 5:00 PM on a Sunday.
• 7:46
  I have to get my daughter home fed and in bed in the next three hours.
• 7:50
  Or we have a colossal meltdown.
• 7:50
  And then Sunday night, I need to start my reading so that by Monday I have at minimum four hours of reading a mentor call and then getting into webinar where homework was due. Bless my heart.
• 8:02
  Bless my heart, y'all.
• 8:06
  And I really think the social curator team for empowering me to do this, they took a lot of stuff off my plate.
• 8:12
  And when somebody takes something off your plate, it means that they're doing that thing. This team, when I say that I was able to go through this program, ooh, little lump in my throat dying when I say that I've been able to go through this program, it didn't come at a cost, it came at the cost of somebody else.
• 8:26
  And I just have to express a lot of appreciation for month of this program was very, very, very intensive.
• 8:33
  I found myself working every weekend because I'm managing a full workload.
• 8:37
  And if I didn't get my homework and reading done during the week, which normally I wasn't because I wanna do dinnertime with my daughter, I wanna do lunchtime with her.
• 8:43
  Um, I was working on the weekends.
• 8:46
  I was waking up very early reading before my daughter woke up.
• 8:51
  So I just wanna be real about what that experience was.
• 8:55
  But when we first started the, the very first thing we had to do was write a postmortem.
• 9:03
  And this is an exercise where you write a letter to yourself dated a year from that date.
• 9:11
  And I'm gonna share this premortem exercise with you because you don't have to be a part of a scaling program to actually do this. In fact, you need nothing but a pen and some paper.
• 9:24
  I'm gonna read these instructions to you because this has had the most profound effect on my business and it had a profound effect on my life.
• 9:33
  It's as if this exercise opened this vault of truth that I had always known to be there and didn't have the courage to open.
• 9:43
  It was part of our assignment.
• 9:43
  It was our homework.
• 9:46
  I had to open the vault and I wanna give you the opportunity to open the vault.
• 9:50
  We all know what we need to do if we just gave ourselves the permission to do it.
• 9:54
  So this is taken as part of the l a Stanford program. What I'm about to start saying now is not my own content.
• 10:03
  I'm gonna share this with you because I firmly believe that you should do it. To have a breakout 2023 quote, perform a premortem on your real world venture that is facing a scaling challenge. Imagine that we are meeting you a year from now.
• 10:22
  Your venture has failed. Your investors and family aren't angry, your employees are unhappy and your customers are leaving.
• 10:30
  How did the venture get to this point?
• 10:32
  Write a story of how the venture spiraled downward into failure.
• 10:36
  Include the obstacles and decisions that led to the failure in the story.
• 10:41
  Remember, don't provide us with a list. We need a story.
• 10:47
  The pre-mortem is a story writing technique that you will use during this activity.
• 10:51
  It is detailed in chapter eight of Scaling of Excellence and the cluster fug lecture video, a pre-mortem, asks you to imagine in the future of your adventure so that you can identify how to deal with possible scaling challenges.
• 11:07
  Think of this activity as imaginary time travel.
• 11:11
  Try to tell your story in under 500 words.
• 11:16
  I wrote the story on October 8th and what, I'm sorry, I should probably denote.
• 11:24
  That was the end of the content from the Stanford Scaling Program. Okay, now we're now we're, now we're back. It it, my personal thoughts, my narrative, I completed this assignment on October 8th, 2022, and it was very hard to write.
• 11:39
  It was very hard to write.
• 11:44
  I spent about two and a half hours writing this.
• 11:47
  And it was crazy because the time that I had spent writing it, the truth of the decisions that I, I had to make for the business became very clear cuz it says, talk about your challenges.
• 11:56
  Talk about your pitfalls.
• 11:59
  Talk about what happened from the future and what you didn't do that caused your business to fail.
• 12:06
  Tell us what you didn't do that caused your business to fail.
• 12:11
  I have to tell you, all that thing done broke me.
• 12:15
  I saw all of my mistakes in my current future.
• 12:21
  And then I was forced to make very hard decisions about what I was going to do today to ensure that my future story did not become a reality. I have to tell you, friends, I learned a lot.
• 12:36
  And throughout the month of October and throughout the month of November, two of the hardest months of my entire year, personally and professionally, I hope I never ever have to repeat them.
• 12:50
  But this morning I met with my mentor for the last time, sweet David.
• 12:56
  And I said, if you would've asked me in September, if I would be the person I am today, I would tell you it would be impossible that I wouldn't be able to have done the thing that I have done and make the decisions that I have made.
• 13:10
  I would never be able to tell you that. Had I gone through that, I would look at you feeling lighter and feeling joy and feeling confidence and feeling hope. For the first time in a long time, I would tell you I did not have the strength to make the decisions that I did.
• 13:23
  But I had a reckoning. I saw what I needed to do.
• 13:27
  I saw who I needed to become.
• 13:27
  And so as we end this program, JD Luna and I are again headed to San Francisco.
• 13:36
  We will be then driving to Palo Alto.
• 13:38
  I have reservations at some of the coolest restaurants.
• 13:42
  I have to tell you as a side note, the last time we went to Palo Alto, I didn't have any reservation. Cause I'm like, oh, it's a college town.
• 13:49
  It should be sweet and charming.
• 13:49
  Let me just tell y'all no, this is like creme de creme.
• 13:56
  Every restaurant has like a two hour wait.
• 13:58
  And when you're dealing with a two year old, you're like, are you kidding me right now? Like, I'm not even lying. We ate at Whole Foods, y'all. Come on. We had dinner at Whole Foods.
• 14:06
  Now nothing's wrong with Whole Foods, but you're kind of like, oh, this momentum, this momentous experience that we're gonna be having.
• 14:13
  We should be at a restaurant. And I'm like, you're dealing with a toddler.
• 14:16
  I'm not gonna wait two hours.
• 14:17
  We end up walking into Whole Foods and eating from there to go, what is it called? Like their buffet to Go station. And I was like, all right.
• 14:26
  Lesson learned. Jasmine, when you come back to Palo Alto girl, you are securing these reservations.
• 14:31
  So we are gonna be leaving headed to Bella Alto.
• 14:34
  I have the reservations for restaurants intact and my husband just said that he wants to be fully present, fully present to the opportunity and fully present to the gratitude and fully present to really document and celebrate who I've become in the process.
• 14:49
  And so I'll look forward to giving a recap soon. Chat soon. Bye y'all.
• 14:55
  Well back in Southern California after what was one of the most incredible experiences and weekends, I have to tell you that I wasn't expecting to be as nervous as I was when I stepped onto the stage. But before I get to the stage part, I have to let you know that the day was filled with a lot of classwork and networking and taking micro breakout sessions according to exit plans and financials and a lot of big picture thinking.
• 15:25
  So if anybody thought that we were gonna go and just be able to meander our way through a graduation, um, no, it was a lot of work before the actual ceremony.
• 15:35
  And they had issued tickets and we were in the CEX auditorium there at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
• 15:42
  And that morning it was cold and it was rainy.
• 15:46
  And JD and Luna dropped me off and they waved goodbye. And they said, well, we'll be back. We'll see you for the one 30 ceremony.
• 15:54
  So I went through the morning, did my work, and just felt a deep sense of presence.
• 16:00
  I looked around the room and there was a professor by the name of Dr. Huggy Rao.
• 16:05
  And he started the day by giving a keynote.
• 16:08
  And you'd think that the keynote would be surrounded or embody or be entrenched in, uh, scaling business principles. And in fact, we ended the program and he really wanted to focus on us.
• 16:23
  The three things we felt we brought to the table, to the table of our business. And it was such a personal question.
• 16:32
  And we hopped these answers.
• 16:32
  And I thought to myself, I strongly believe that I am bringing a level of authenticity to what it is I do. And as a division of this, this podcast, the content I create, I get to share with people the content that I am creating, but also the content that's rooted in experience.
• 16:55
  So we walked into the auditorium after a long day of work and we were supposed to, as students gather our seats there in the front of the auditorium and friends and family were able to join, but they had to sit in different seats.
• 17:11
  And I snuck out of line like total rebellious kindergartner that I am, and I hid off in the corner because I really, really wanted to see JD in Luna and give them a hug and give them a kiss. And when I saw them enter, Luna ran up to me and gave me a big, big, big hug.
• 17:32
  She had no idea what was going on.
• 17:35
  But JD had let me know that out in the corridor, he had run into my mentor David.
• 17:41
  And he and David had a great opportunity.
• 17:43
  And JD said that he was able to thank David because for every session that I had with David, they were recorded and JD was able to re-watch them on his own time and in his own way.
• 17:56
  And he said it was a really unique experience to be able to see his wife and business partner learn and become a different person.
• 18:04
  And it was in that moment that I got a little lump in my throat and you know, j d's not so much of a crier, but he looked at me and we had a knowing, we had a, knowing that the person I was when I entered the program in September was an entirely different person ending the program in December.
• 18:19
  So we went through the graduation process and I accepted this beautiful certificate embossed with the Stanford logo and was able to thank the founders of the program for extending such a gracious, gracious experience.
• 18:33
  And then you'd think it would be like bells and whistles and let's do it up.
• 18:39
  And there was a lot of people who went out except for the fact that I was there with a two year old. Oh, okay.
• 18:45
  So we were like pressed up against nap time.
• 18:48
  So while other people are going out and doing like celebrations, I felt like torn. And then I realized, wait, there's actually nowhere else in the world I want to be than with my husband and my daughter.
• 19:02
  So we went back to the hotel, we put her down for a nap, and we were sitting in a somewhat dark hotel suite and jds like whispering, he's like, so what are we gonna do?
• 19:11
  How are we gonna celebrate? And um, it was really sweet because we opened the doors.
• 19:19
  So we have a conjoining kinda like sweet area.
• 19:22
  It was like a little office area that they had these French doors and we had put her down. And when we opened the doors into our bedroom, JD had bought bouquets of pese and candles.
• 19:32
  And so he lit the candles, I smelled the pese.
• 19:36
  And there in our tiny little refrigerator in the hotel, he opened up a bottle of champagne.
• 19:42
  It was the nicest thing. And he said, there's this little lounge right outside. We'll take the baby monitor.
• 19:51
  Let's sit by the fireplace.
• 19:53
  And so the two of us sat in an entirely empty hotel lounge next to a fire, and he popped open a bottle of champagne and we just talked and we had an opportunity to dream of what 2023 will look like.
• 20:10
  And I am feeling a lot of gratitude, but more than anything I, y'all know that I openly talk about how I believe in God.
• 20:20
  And so I don't believe that things happen without a reason.
• 20:24
  Whether or not you believe that's like associated with God or not.
• 20:26
  It's just my belief. And so in that time, I'm reflecting on the timing of the program and how God knew what I needed before I did that I was going to be having a radical transformation in my life and in my business, and I needed the additional support and I needed the education and I needed the conversations and I needed the accountability.
• 20:51
  I needed something so far out of my comfort zone to push me through one of the hardest seasons in my business.
• 20:56
  And so as I end the year, I look back and I just don't look at the program for what it did for me.
• 21:04
  I'm hoping that what the program did for you, as you've listened to some of my key takeaways in the last few weeks, is that you're also learning how to think in a new way.
• 21:15
  And I hope very much how the program was there for me, offering me different insights.
• 21:21
  I hope that I and this podcast was able to offer you different insights.
• 21:26
  This podcast is made outta labor of love. If you have not noticed now, we have not at a single time ever run a commercial up until this point.
• 21:36
  So we pay to put this podcast together because I believe it is a small thing that I can do to say thank you for being a part of this journey.
• 21:48
  If this podcast has ever done a single thing for you, I wonder what it would feel like for you to pass it on to a friend who might need the same. That is how this podcast grows.
• 21:59
  That is how we find accountability, and that is how we find community.
• 22:03
  This podcast, content creation, business building ideation in dream building along the way is how we create these puzzle pieces of growth for us all.
• 22:16
  Like always, for those of you who leave reviews, thank you truly.
• 22:22
  And I know that if you have heard this more than three times and you have not left a review, can you do me a solid in 2022?
• 22:29
  The reviews are actually profound in how we are able to attract guests to the show and then also spread the word about what it is we do.
• 22:38
  So if you're listening on Apple iTunes to this podcast, a review would mean the world.
• 22:44
  For those of you who share the podcast on social, thank you.
• 22:49
  You are the people who are spreading the word. And here's the thing, when we look back at what it means to scale our business, we must all define our version of scaling.
• 23:01
  Whether your version is to scale to 10,000 or a hundred thousand or a million, 10 million or a hundred million, heck if it's scaling to 8 billion, I hope that we are able to share our journey, bring people along with us, and live a life that is so much bigger and wilder and more amazing than any of us could ever imagine. Thank you from the bottom of my heart in, as you scale your business, I hope you also remember to scale your dream and bring people along with you.
• 23:34
  Thank you for listening to the Jasmine Star Show.