Latest / The Jasmine Star Show / Selling without Feeling Sales-y | Interview on the Selling with Love Podcast

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Selling without Feeling Sales-y | Interview on the Selling with Love Podcast · The Jasmine Star Show

• 0:13
  Hey there. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. My name is Amanda.
• 0:16
  I'm a community admin at Social Curator and I'm excited to tell you about today's episode with Jason Mark Campbell.
• 0:23
  Jason is a sales genius and host of the Selling with Love podcast, where he shares top strategies for small business owners to embrace the art of selling as a way to transform lives.
• 0:34
  Jason recently invited Jasmine on his podcast and their conversation was so good we just had to share it with you.
• 0:39
  If you're ready to learn about pricing, copywriting and how to sell with authenticity, get Let's listen in.
• 0:49
  Super excited to have you Jaine and welcome to the show.
• 0:52
  Thank you so much. I am very honored to be here.
• 0:55
  It's an honor to have you here and maybe you'll correct me, but I was doing a little bit of research and you know, you talk about turning your passion into profits and I find that it must have been an interesting journey for you to be on this, call it cookie cutter path, studying law, having kind of this career outline. You know, you become partner law is a pretty straightforward to success kind of path, but here you are, you took a pause and you went into the path of entrepreneurship.
• 1:20
  I'd love for you to kind of take us back there and tell us how easy or hard of a decision that was.
• 1:26
  I think it was equal parts easy and equal parts hard.
• 1:29
  The easy part about that decision was that I was really unhappy with where I was in life and I never stopped to ask myself why.
• 1:37
  Like why was I in law school?
• 1:38
  What did I actually wanna do with the legal career?
• 1:40
  I am the daughter of an immigrant and so I just figured, well, education is the way that you get to where you wanna go.
• 1:46
  And so I continued down the education track, never really pausing to actually think what was my purpose?
• 1:51
  What's my driving force? Where would I be the most fulfilled? So in that way, sure it's easy to have this coming to of a decision and then it's really difficult because I had never seen anybody in my family ever start a business.
• 2:02
  And I know it seems very hard for people to understand, but I was 26 years old and I didn't know a single person in my life who had a business. So somebody having a business was the equivalent of meeting an Olympian or an NBA star or the president of United States.
• 2:16
  I had never had that happen in my life. So for me to actually say, oh, I wanna be an entrepreneur, I actually think that that's putting too much credence on what the decision was.
• 2:25
  The decision was I wasn't even using the vernacular entrepreneur.
• 2:28
  It was kind of like, well there is something I'm passionate about and I want to become a photographer. I don't have a camera, but do I think that if I had the tools I could actually be successful?
• 2:40
  And still in the terms of business, I'm not thinking in that way quite yet.
• 2:44
  I am thinking in terms of what's actually going to happen when it needs to happen, and can I make money by way of this? So for me, I was working a job as well as trying to start my photography business and get it off ground. And so in that regard, I didn't put monetary pressure on what at the time I didn't know was a business.
• 3:05
  It was can I do something I love and find a way to make money?
• 3:09
  It wasn't until doing it for a year, my first year being a photographer, I made over a hundred thousand dollars and that's when I started realizing, oh, I think that this is a business.
• 3:18
  And that's when I started changing my whole belief system around that.
• 3:23
  Wow, that's amazing. And you know, by photographer, I think you're being humble as well.
• 3:26
  You're one of the top wedding photographers around and your craft was so perfected that you were requested around the world to do work. And so as such, I just wanna highlight that because a lot of us maybe focus on the business aspect and the entrepreneurial aspect that things are out marketing sales.
• 3:41
  Yet in your case, it seems like you were more focused on the craft without an awareness of these other elements. Did you see that as an advantage or a disadvantage?
• 3:49
  It's crazy depending on where our paths intersect on the journey, I think that people now would say like, oh, Jasmine's definitely more at the time was more con considerate and considering of the art. And if you had met me early on in my journey, a lot of the biggest critiques from other photographers was that I didn't care enough about the art, that I was really focused on the marketing.
• 4:11
  And I think that at the time I didn't know anything about marketing, I didn't know anything about business and I knew nothing about photography.
• 4:19
  So in my mind I just studied the most I could.
• 4:22
  And then at different times in my life and my career, I flexed different muscles.
• 4:25
  Like early in the career, I was hellbent on the craft and I wasn't even thinking about a business because I wasn't even sure it could be a business. You know, my first objective was to figure out can I actually be the type of creative that somebody would pay?
• 4:37
  And that's where I started focusing and then it kind of pivoted from there.
• 4:40
  That thing you just said right there I think is key.
• 4:42
  And it was one of the missing pieces I see for a lot of people who might be struggling is just understanding if somebody will pay for the value that I'm looking to provide with my craft.
• 4:51
  And I find that if you don't nail that pretty quickly, it makes you actually struggle, maybe even waste money trying to build up something.
• 4:57
  You haven't even validated that idea.
• 4:59
  And now that you're doing so much around personal branding, social media, marketing and sales, could you elaborate more about what are the things that you should look for when you're trying to get those first customers to pay you to see that, oh my God, I'm on the right track of something, or Hey, I think I might be wasting my time here.
• 5:15
  I'd love for you to push back on my approach. It was only my approach.
• 5:19
  So looking back and I'm like, could I have done things differently?
• 5:22
  Perhaps could I have done them better?
• 5:23
  Perhaps I was being guided by forces of the market that were outside of me.
• 5:28
  So my perspective of money was also wildly different than the average person because I literally came from nothing. My father came from Mexico, immigrated from Mexico, my mom came from Puerto Rico, they met on the streets of East Los Angeles.
• 5:40
  And even though my dad worked four or five jobs, money was so tight in our household because he didn't was like, goodness gracious, like 25 or 26 years old.
• 5:50
  So he was teaching myself and my twin sister how to read, and he was improving his skills at the time.
• 5:55
  So we're talking about a very blue collar worker working multiple jobs and having five children. So money for me was always something limited.
• 6:04
  I lived in a home full of love, but not much a full of anything else.
• 6:07
  And so in my mind when I started my business, it wasn't like, oh I, I need to make $85,000 for this to be a visit. It was literally like, what would my time be worth to do something I love?
• 6:19
  And so in the beginning, I worked a lot for free, I just wanted to get comfortable in being able to charge somebody.
• 6:26
  And then I started very, very, very low.
• 6:28
  Like people often ask me regardless of the business that they start and it's like what should I set my pricing as?
• 6:33
  And my general rule of thumb is set it for as low as you're comfortable with.
• 6:38
  I didn't say set it low, I just said set it as low as you're comfortable with.
• 6:44
  rule of thumb for you to run your businesses for years on end, but in order to get that first customer, because the first customer will guide you with what you need to provide for the second, third, fourth, fifth, 10th, 200th.
• 6:55
  And over time you continuously increase your prices based on how you're learning what you're doing and how you're improving your craft and how you're investing back in the business. So for me, I just asked myself, what is it going to be worth for me to get somebody to sit in front of my camera? And if it was a portrait session, I think I started somewhere in the ballpark of 75 or a hundred dollars.
• 7:14
  Now that was a lot more than I was making on a per hour basis.
• 7:17
  And as my career grew from there, I was able to increase my prices slowly over time as the demand increased and as I got better.
• 7:25
  It's hard to push back on your ideas because I have to say I'm so aligned with it because I also suggest to people it's like, hey, at the beginning you need your case studies, you need to have experience, you need to prove. And the case studies is funny, right? We're like, oh my god, nobody wants to buy from me cuz they can't see my case studies.
• 7:39
  And I've realized that no, you have struggles to sell because you haven't seen the case studies for yourself. And so it becomes a race to serve.
• 7:47
  And I love that you're bringing that ideology, and I hadn't heard it framed that way before, is pricing as low as your comfortable with?
• 7:54
  And as your comfort level actually shows that you get busier.
• 7:57
  I can just recall one of my good friends, Miriam, she was doing some consulting and she was doing free sessions and got so burnt out. She was like, my calendar's fold, I'm helping all these people for free.
• 8:07
  I was like, you gotta start charging more. That's your natural filter.
• 8:10
  And I'm assuming that when you went on your journey of photography, like you could not be comfortable charging $75 per portrait when you had a lineup of people waiting for that work to be done.
• 8:21
  So in order for you to be comfortable, your price had to rise.
• 8:25
  And I find that's just a beautiful part of the journey and often one that, you know, I think I'm a bit to blame, you might be a bit to blame as well, Jasmine, because there's so much marketing that's out there that says, you know, sell high ticket products, get paid what you're worth, et cetera.
• 8:39
  And it's almost like we want a shortcut to the space where we're making abundance, we're like very comfortable with our craft.
• 8:46
  And I'm just wondering in your case, when you see somebody trying to aim for those shortcuts, do you have some words of advice for someone to realize there's some necessary steps that need to happen?
• 8:55
  Well, if there's somebody who's listening, we have to first wonder, are they cognizant of the shortcut? Without cognizant, there's not gonna be an awakening to change. And so first and foremost, we actually have to identify that there are traditionally speaking, very few people who could ever go from a low ticket to a high ticket.
• 9:15
  And as tempting as it sounds, and as amazing as your offer is statistically the people who can jump from a low ticket to a high ticket is probably, I'm guessing less than 1%.
• 9:27
  And so if we're gonna play the odds, the odds would make the most sense to build out centric circles that move your audience with your growth, not cut out an entire audience that can transition with your growth.
• 9:41
  So if you think about this as not from a place of how do I get more money in the short term, we wanna think of this as how do I increase the lifetime bought from me once? Because a person who's bought from you once has a much higher likelihood of buying from you in the future.
• 9:56
  But what you need to do is offer like a pyramid structure for this person to grow alongside you, not to cut out the bottom of the pyramid who actually are helping you get to the next level. So I don't look at this as you're capable of a high ticket offer, I just think there's a lot more room to growth.
• 10:12
  So just imagine just for math's sake, you have 10 clients who pay you a hundred dollars and then you have a high ticket offer of $10,000. Well, of the people who paid a hundred dollars, maybe there's one person who can afford the 10,000.
• 10:27
  So if we just lay this out, there's 10 people who paid a hundred dollars, that's a thousand dollars, and then one person who then bought the $10,000 offer. In totality, you've made an $11,000 transaction.
• 10:36
  So half of you is thinking, wow, I just got $10,000.
• 10:41
  Now let me pose a different scenario along this growth pyramid toward the top, you have a hundred dollars offer and then you have a $500 offer, a $1,500 offer and a $7,500 offer.
• 10:55
  If you were to take half of the people who bought the 100 and move them up the pyramid with you, you have an overall gain over time.
• 11:06
  The question then becomes, are you willing to work through and build the pyramid so that when that $10,000 offer comes, you haven't cut out 90% of your available leads, you're actually taking the leads alongside you. So over time it's amplified.
• 11:22
  I love that methodology because I think there's a lot that we have to do with meeting people where they're at financially.
• 11:27
  And by having these different tiers, you actually get to offer the level of service and support that people are looking for based on their current financial situation.
• 11:35
  Everyone's situation is different and I actually really love that approach that you share.
• 11:39
  And I kind of wanted to dig a bit more about these skills that you have now.
• 11:43
  And you advocate a lot around personal branding, you know, social media, I don't know if you're still doing a lot of the photography or do you still keep that on the side as well?
• 11:51
  Well, I always say that I was a photographer before photographer. And regardless of how labels will be applied, I will always be a photographer.
• 11:57
  I have all of my camera gear, I still shoot for a social curator, I'm c e o of social curator.
• 12:03
  I still take photographs of my loved ones, my daughter, my husband, my friends.
• 12:07
  And so for all intents and purposes you could likely write on my tombstone photographer even if nobody else called me that. So yes, a hundred percent I identify that as such.
• 12:16
  Well I find that it's amazing, especially in an age where we're doing a lot of video content, like whether it's the YouTube, the socials, et cetera. You know, I did not have a background in photography at all, but as I started putting my message out there, I realized, oh, one of the important skills I can have is understanding how cameras lighting my audio work. So that ended up being complimentary.
• 12:35
  Now I'd be curious to know what are other key complimentary skills regardless of the business that you're in, that you find are most relevant in 2023 to allow you to be more likely to succeed or just more successful in general?
• 12:48
  Copywriting, hands down, all day every day.
• 12:51
  I know that at the top of the marketing food chain videos at the top, but I started my career as a photographer leveraging copy. And I did that because I didn't have anything else.
• 13:04
  I didn't have any money. I had dropped outta law school, I had no money.
• 13:07
  My husband was a startup company, I was working part-time, I was saving every single penny I could to rent camera gear cuz I couldn't afford it. So I would rent camera gear, go to the shoot, return the camera gear the next day, and then save up the cash from the shoot over time to reinvest and get my own gear.
• 13:26
  So I didn't even actually have a full set of gear as a photographer for well into my second year of business.
• 13:30
  But I also never went in debt.
• 13:34
  I never took a loan, I paid for everything on my own.
• 13:37
  I'm very proud of that fact because I never wanted to put pressure on my business that all of a sudden I was like handcuffed or choke hold until paying somebody back or getting interest and then forcing myself to take any client I had to because I had a loan to pay off for me, it would harm the creative process.
• 13:53
  And so I kind of played it safe in the beginning and dang it, I got off track.
• 13:58
  What was the original question?
• 14:00
  I was just asking you about the key skills that you need and you spoke coffee.
• 14:04
  Oh yes, yes.
• 14:06
  So I couldn't even afford a website and so there was a free thing called Blogger and I just titled the blog Jasmine Star Photography.
• 14:14
  And I started writing copy even without photos.
• 14:17
  And so I was just writing copy and then over time I was able to upload photos that I was taking and I was sharing the journey.
• 14:22
  And what I started realizing was that people are connected to written word because they can consume it most often faster than they can consume a video.
• 14:31
  And even though technology has changed a lot, and even though people are arguing Hil bent right now in 2023, that copy means nothing because AI is doing so much of it.
• 14:42
  What I would venture to say that without a top layer of original written content, you can then leverage that in an entirely different way on top of an AI layer.
• 14:53
  But if you don't have any originating content, then what you're just doing is spewing out the same thing that AI is spitting out for everybody else.
• 15:00
  AI is gonna become a powerful vehicle once you add a layer of your own writing, your own thoughts. And then AI will take all of that, distill it down, add and fill in gaps and help you run faster in creating the copy.
• 15:10
  But your written word is going to be the thing and the linchpin that ties not just a great video together. Like oftentimes on Instagram, if I post a reel, it's great that the reel gets a lot of views, but I've actually realized that the people who read the copy and then respond with there is a much deeper, richer dialogue that then parlays itself into direct messages.
• 15:30
  And direct messages are like a lilypad to actually closing sales regardless of the ticket size.
• 15:34
  And so for me, it's not just having a really cool photo or a really cool video, it's what am I doing with the copy to contextualize.
• 15:42
  And now you know Instagram is having captions that are readable by the search mechanisms.
• 15:48
  And so if you're just doing like hashtag O O T D like outfit of the day or hashtag nom nom nam, that's fine If somebody's looking for outfit of the day, and that's fine if somebody's looking for nom nom nam based on your lunch, but there is an opportunity for you to create searchable content in addition to the visual content that would allow you to have more people discover what it is you're doing. So do I sound bullish on copy? Absolutely.
• 16:11
  But I also think that outside of social platforms, when you could put it on a blog, when you could use it in show notes as for a podcast, when you can send it in a newsletter, you go very deep with those relationships and it's deep relationships that actually transition to sales, not snazzy cool writing copy that Giza more, it's hot, it's the long term lead up to the sale.
• 16:30
  I'm glad you're bullish on that, I'm glad you're saying that and reminding people of its importance because you're right, the buzz around chat, G P T and all the, or the AI tools that are making the writing so much more efficient makes us forget that there's a core essence of ourselves that goes in every word that we put out as well.
• 16:46
  I have to say one of the mistakes I made in my business too early is I was trying to put together some email sequences and I had who he was really adamant, he was really excited about writing the copy and he just wrote it and every time I looked at it I was like, something's off.
• 17:05
  And I felt bad about Feedbacking cuz he was doing a great job and he was doing so much stuff and he was writing it and I did think it was terrible, but something was off and I realized that it's because the way that he would write copy was about his essence and it wasn't my essence.
• 17:21
  And I think that there's such a relevance to the personal brand that you build, especially if you're an author and expert or someone that's trying to put their message out there and your voice, your face and your written word represents who you are.
• 17:32
  I think that's one of the things I actually had to pull it back indoors.
• 17:36
  I had to actually start being, cuz I know how to write copy, but I got lazy and I got complacent and that's on me.
• 17:41
  And so when I started writing the messages myself and when I got people replying to me just saying like, wow, that really spoke to me And I was like, wow, I think was a corner I tried to cut too quick and I'm glad that you're here to remind it and I think it's a powerful reminder for anybody who's listening in.
• 17:56
  So.
• 17:56
  But I wanna be very clear though, like this one thing real quick is I'm not an advocate for not outsourcing or letting it go because as business owners, our job is to create a vision and then our job is to do as many things in the business until we can't, until we could hire somebody who could do what we do the same level or better than us.
• 18:18
  And so then we begin to replace ourselves in our own business because I hear a lot of people say, oh my business is my baby and I love that. I truly do, but I don't want to raise a baby for 18 years.
• 18:29
  Like I want to raise a baby that turns into a human, right?
• 18:32
  So it's like you want things to develop and you want to love it and develop with it, not continue to hold a newborn baby for 18 years. And so in my mind I look at the business and be like, I need to create a structure that at one point the business can work without me.
• 18:45
  And so if I am bullish on copy and I am, what I am thinking is let me work in the long-term vision.
• 18:50
  Do I think that in the future I could have somebody who's a powerful copywriter who understands my voice? If the answer is yes, and for me, I believe that there are better copywriters who will understand my voice, but in order for me to set them up to succeed, it's not enough to be a great copywriter.
• 19:04
  It's not enough to understand my voice.
• 19:05
  What they need to do is understand the nuances and what is valuable to me.
• 19:08
  And so if I write a piece of copy that I start seeing is resonating on social media, I'll put it in a file and I'll label it like newsletter or social post and then like two ideas like or two reasons why I thought it worked or two things that people were responding about it.
• 19:20
  And so then what I'm gonna do is create an archive and notion and I'll go through and I'll be like, these are copywriting standards. I'm like, this one did well because of this, this one did well because of this. And so what I'm going to do in the future, whenever we expand to the team in that way, and I'm like, you are gonna sit with me and we're gonna write, we're gonna write a long time and then we're gonna go back to the standards and I'm gonna give you a newsletter or a test blog or I'm gonna give you a podcast that I've recorded with Jason.
• 19:43
  And what I want you to do is listen to the podcast.
• 19:45
  I want you to take the big ideas and I want you to create a newsletter or create a blog post around this why I want the SEO copy. I want to be able to link to your podcast when people are searching for sales and they happen to come across the copy and you can really SEO works on copy.
• 20:00
  And so all of a sudden if this copywriter can take this interview from my words, understand how I write, understand what's resonating, and they put together a piece of content, my vision is that I'm gonna get it back and I'm like, ah, this is like I wrote it, I have to believe that or else I'm gonna be like, I gotta write copy for the next 25 years in addition to doing all these other things. The answer for me as a visionary, c e o is not that, but to build the systems now for the business I wanna build in the future.
• 20:22
  I'm gonna be sitting on a side of the listeners here and taking lots of notes cuz I'm so glad you made this injection and you are right.
• 20:30
  I'm so glad you did that because I realized that I haven't done the proper tracking of my own methods and I think the reason that the person didn't succeed is because I didn't set them up for success.
• 20:39
  And so I'm hoping for anybody else who's paying attention that you're getting the same types of insights as me.
• 20:43
  You're taking some notes on things you'll be able to do when you go back into your business and everything that we're hearing so far is absolute gold for me.
• 20:50
  I hope it's resonating and hitting as hard for you as you're listening from wherever you are. Um, Jasmine, this is amazing.
• 20:57
  What are the best ways that people could connect with you?
• 20:59
  Like I know we have your podcast, I know there's your website, but what are the things you're most excited about For 2023? My word is, so I always have a word of the year, an intention, and the word comes to me and years it's been a variety of words.
• 21:14
  One year it was surrender.
• 21:14
  Another year it was self-love, another year it was trust.
• 21:20
  And so this year my word is rebirth and I kind of just grappled with it and I'm like, what does this word actually mean?
• 21:26
  And so the way that I am choosing to interpret it is there was the old me and there is the new me, and 2023 is the new version of me.
• 21:36
  So when you ask what are you most excited about, I can honestly look across the internet and tell you I am excited for the person and the version I am to become. And until I feel really self-sustained, my feet deeply rooted until that point, what I am most excited for is to continue to create and help other people without expectation.
• 21:55
  So there is the, oh, that's such a great thing.
• 21:59
  She wants to help people.
• 22:02
  And then there's also the business strategy side of it.
• 22:04
  And a brand is not your logo and your brand is not your website and a brand is not your typography that you use or business cards.
• 22:12
  A brand is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room.
• 22:17
  A brand is what somebody feels about you.
• 22:18
  A brand is when somebody says your business name and or your name.
• 22:22
  Somebody says, wow, amazing. That's a brand.
• 22:26
  A brand is when you are looking for a photographer, a chiropractor, a dentist, a course creator, A brand is why somebody would pick your offering versus a litany of others is because you made them think or feel a certain way.
• 22:42
  And so I don't know who this new version of me is quite yet, but I do know that myself and everybody else who is listening right now, we have the capacity to make somebody feel something. And the way that we make somebody feel something is to identify a desire.
• 22:58
  And as you identify that desire and you speak to it and you share freely of what you are learning or what you are going through or what you have done and somebody says, I too have identified in that struggle and this person gave me something and saw me where I am, they cannot help but feel a sense of gratitude and indebtedness and like, I wanna support this person.
• 23:18
  So this new version of me as I'm really trying to find out what does it mean to be me in 2023 and who is this new version until that point, I am so excited to continue to create content, to share everything I know to bring people on the journey because there are times, multiple times, this is not the first time that I've had like a existential like identity crisis in who I am as an entrepreneur.
• 23:35
  So it's like I've been here before, I know on to get to the other side, but instead of fighting it and resisting it and raising an angry fist or wondering why would I want to do the new version of me because that's the old reaction I had. The new version of me is like, let's sit and ride this wave.
• 23:51
  Let's enjoy the process and not the progress.
• 23:55
  Let's not put time demands on something that God, the universe is gonna say in the right time, you're gonna get there.
• 24:03
  Now you have a choice in how you feel getting to that point.
• 24:06
  Do I wanna be angry, frustrated, scared, doubtful, or do I want to choose? Well, that takes the exact same amount of energy to say I am going to create and I'm going to help and I'm gonna trust, and I'm gonna know that what I put out will ultimately come back to me and who I am meant to be is on the horizon.
• 24:21
  How I get there and the emotions I associate with me is my decision, and that's what I wanna talk to people about because we're all gonna go through it as business owners.
• 24:29
  Love, love, love. That is powerful.
• 24:32
  I'm super excited For anybody who's tuning in, listen, we're gonna put some links so you can connect with Jazzmine as well.
• 24:36
  I would say more powerfully if you wanna have a direct action from here, if you are on Instagram, definitely find a piece of yourself.
• 24:42
  If you feel rebirth is also resonating with yourself, feel free to share a story, put in hashtag rebirth tag jazzmine and maybe share some of the insights you've gotten from this episode. Jazzmine, it's been wonderful having you as a guest.
• 24:53
  I know there's a fountain of things we could still talk about, but there was one question I'd love to ask every single one of my guests.
• 24:58
  Since you are on the Selling with Love podcast, I wanted to ask you, what does selling with love mean to you?
• 25:04
  When you care about a transformation in less of a transaction, as long as you are offering a transformation, when you are not just delivering on a product or a service, but when you're delivering on changing a customer or a client, their behavior, their ideology, their weight, their teeth, their clothing, whatever it is that transaction is, as long as they identified with a transformation, you are truly loving who you're serving. And when they feel loved, they can't help but talk about and endorse your business.
• 25:32
  When you care about the transformation and less about the transaction, you end up getting more transactions in the process.
• 25:39
  Amen to that.
• 25:41
  Welcome back. I don't know about you, but I took some notes during that conversation.
• 25:45
  Jasmine's emphasis on creating long-term deep relationships, that transition to sales encouraged me to keep showing up consistently, and I hope it's the same for you.
• 25:55
  Thanks for tuning into the Jasmine Star show today. Friends, we look forward to seeing you again soon.