Jessica Green with Self-Made

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Self-Made made Jessica Green. How are you?

Jessica Green: I am doing fantastic and thank you so much for inviting me on today. I always love to share with the world all of the things Self-Made and all of the things Jessica Green and how I can help more female online entrepreneurs.

Stone Payton: Well, we are delighted to have you on the broadcast. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I’d love to start if we could, with an overview. If you could paint a picture. Mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Jessica Green: Well, I’ve been on a journey for about 18 years in the business world, but the last ten mainly in the social marketing space, with working with female online entrepreneurs and network marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing. And there’s one thing I found in common that there’s a lot of opportunity out there, but not necessarily a lot of skill set in the tech space. So being able to take a business and, uh, infuse tech into it so that they can build, scale and accelerate online. And so I dove into helping people, helping mainly female online entrepreneurs infuse tech so that they can accelerate and scale their business with a tech savvy mentor, someone who can help them along the way.

Stone Payton: So what did prompt for you, Jessica? The focus on serving the female constituency. Was it a cataclysmic event or did you kind of know all along this is the group I want to serve?

Jessica Green: No, I just was that group, right? I was that person. And I think that’s where a lot of really good coaches and mentors come from is struggling through the same exact problem that then they can turn around and go help other people with, grab all of the ones that are left behind and can kind of help them through and shortcut things. So I did, I had a number of businesses. I launched a few businesses a number of years ago and realized real quickly that in this online world and this online space, things were moving extremely fast, right? Just ten years ago, I had kind of fallen out of a brick and mortar business and into a network marketing business, and I found that most people didn’t have a business and marketing degree, just like I did, and have all these years of business experience and building business. And I found that I wanted to help, I wanted to I wanted to help as much as I could, but actually found myself stuck in a little bit of a space of having to pay people to build websites and pay people to infuse tech so that I could scale like the big dogs. I could compete out there in the space with everybody else, and not all females have the background.

Jessica Green: And I shouldn’t even just say females. Not all people going into the online space to build a social marketing type business or an online business have the skill set and don’t necessarily have the money to be paying big agencies big amounts of money to build them a website or do simple email marketing or SMS marketing. And now, in just the last 12 to 18 months, because of AI, this world is just changing every single second of every single day. And it’s it’s a lot to keep up with. So I decided, after struggling through some of that and pouring thousands and thousands, I should say wasting thousands and thousands of dollars and time and frustration and headache that when dollars got tight and I couldn’t spend to have someone else do it for me, I just needed to dig in. I was a pretty smart cookie. I could learn how to do most of this stuff myself, and if I could learn how to do it most myself. And it was pretty simple, I could turn around and teach people how to do it. So it was me going through it and knowing there’s a different way. There’s a better way. If you’re willing to learn a new skill set and partner up with somebody who can help walk you through the hard parts, you can really have a lot of control over your own business no matter what.

Jessica Green: Maybe someday. I do believe in the saying that if you’re working in your business and not on your business, you don’t necessarily have a business. You have another job. I don’t I don’t disagree with that saying once you’ve made it. But on the journey to making it, you need to learn some skill sets. So if things get tight or you have to fire somebody or someone walks away from your business, or a team member quits and all those things, you can always step back in and take over for a short time while you get somebody else back up and running. And I found that was the most freeing feeling. That is the most freeing feeling about what I do now is being able to jump into my business and work almost any part of it, especially in the tech spot, and get it back up and running, because most things now are running from tech behind the scenes, helping you scale things and automate things, and maybe not have so many employees because you can really put a lot of that into technology. So.

Stone Payton: So what are some of the more common mistakes or patterns that you can almost anticipate when you first begin working with someone? I know we’re probably going to see this, this and this. What are some of the most common mistakes patterns that kind of thing?

Jessica Green: Um, number one, not believing in yourself that you could actually do it, thinking that you have to have all this skill set and being scared of not being able to do it. Um, honestly, it’s not as scary as it, as it seems from the outside looking in. And if you have the right person that can walk you through and be there to guide you and just answer some questions. So it’s number one, just thinking that it’s too overwhelming when it’s really not. If you have the time and you’re willing to put that time in to learn the new skill set, you can absolutely do it yourself. You do not need to pay one of these big agencies out there to build all of these things for you. I believe that’s why it’s called self-made. That is the entire reason why it’s called self-made. Um, and then number I would say, um, number two is probably so believing in yourself. But number two is actually not having I don’t think that you need to have your whole brand figured out up front, but it is the one thing that I start with because most people don’t niche down far enough, and I almost hate that word, but I’ll use it. They don’t niche down far enough, but they think that they need to throw their product or service or opportunity out there to as many people as possible, because the online space is so big and vast, and they just want to grab as many people when it actually that does the opposite when your message is trying to hit everyone, it hits no one specifically. And I find that is one of the biggest, biggest things that most newer online entrepreneurs, network marketers, social marketers, just online business coaches, whatever solving problems, they’re trying to do it for way too many people.

Jessica Green: And so their messaging that comes out, their branding that comes out, doesn’t target the person who’s actually looking for them right now, today. So they end up doing a ton of push marketing, which is a lot harder to get the people that you want to say yes than the attraction and pull marketing that you can do if you’ve really picked. And it’s hard because I even had to go through that, like I want to help all online entrepreneurs, but that’s a very big space to Niching way down to I want to help very specifically female online entrepreneurs that are in the social marketing space, meaning network marketing in between the ages of 35 and 55 like that is my niche, and I have to get really specific about that because I want to help everybody. But I also know that the person that’s looking for me needs to hear exactly what I can solve for them, and what I can solve. For a 40 year old female wanting to build her social marketing business is not going to be the same things that a 50 year old male wants to hear about his his business, that he’s trying to create? They don’t aren’t going to listen to the same messaging. So you want people coming to you rather than trying to just word vomit and throw noodles at a wall and hope it sticks. And that’s the biggest problem I see out there.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked, because I think you have articulated for me this gut feeling that I’ve had for some time, and my partner is a big proponent as well, of finding that group that really does want to hear your music. And then if someone else strolls in, great, you know, maybe they can enjoy it too. But finally, play to the ones that want to hear your your brand of music, right?

Jessica Green: Exactly. That’s a great way to put it.

Speaker4: All right, so let’s.

Stone Payton: Dive into the work a little bit. What does that look like? Someone comes into your circle. You begin serving them. Is it one on one instruction? Is it tapping into a platform? Walk us through the work, especially the early phases of of the work you’re doing with the clients?

Jessica Green: Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of started this journey of building out a business called Self-made to put a coaching program together to just really help female online entrepreneurs get their branding set and time management. And like all just all the things that you need as a new entrepreneur, like a lot of people jump into social marketing, network marketing, influencer marketing because they fall in love with the product, service or opportunity. Not because they woke up one day and said, I’m going to go out and create my own business. Some do, but a lot don’t. So don’t always have the background and what it actually takes to be an entrepreneur because they never saw themselves being one. So I started off with a program to help people through that, and then shortly realized that everyone was going to really need all of the tech pieces. And I had learned all of it, and I could turn around and go teach them those things along with it. So what I went and did is created my own, uh, boutique style agency, backed by a tech platform that’s already out there and made it my own. And so our membership is we take people in for a monthly membership that covers the cost of their complete and entire all in one tech platform so they can build all their websites, all their funnels, their email marketing, their SMS marketing, their calendar booking, their I mean, you name it, our platform does it, has it, integrates it, and you don’t need anything else out there.

Jessica Green: Because what we found is a lot of people are out there duct taping 17 systems together for their email and for their websites and funnels and all this stuff, and you actually don’t need that. There’s really great all in one tools out there that can combine everything and save you a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of headaches. So we took that platform and paired it together with the business coaching and made it very inexpensive for people to be able to just belong to something and build along with some people that know what they’re doing and can direct them and guide them. So that’s really what we do. We go out there and we help those female online entrepreneurs that know they want to take the time, they want to spend a little bit of their energy, but not a ton of money going and building all the things that they need to scale their business and infuse that tech. So we start there, and then we have some other programs that we can offer along the way. If people are like, I need to dig in bigger, badder, better, faster, I need it all. I need it done quick. We have some like accelerator masterminds that will will invite people into that are pretty limited. But just because we like to spend time with our clients. But that’s it. It’s a it’s a monthly membership that gets you all of the tech that you need, plus the help to build it all.

Stone Payton: Well, it strikes me that if you can get the tech set up and in place, and particularly if it’s all available through one path as you’re describing, then you can really it seems like it would liberate you to lean into some of the things that you already bring to the table, like whatever. You’re already really good at the clarity of your own vision if you can. If you can get the tech figured out, speak to that a little bit about finding, you know, finding your superpower and really leveraging it.

Jessica Green: So I ended up writing a book through this journey because I did I what I have noticed out there in this industry, and I mean, especially since, you know, like everything changed with the world a few years ago. Right? And all of a sudden there was this like, oh, I could work from home. Oh, I could, I don’t want to go back to work now. I like this idea of working from home and kind of being my own boss. And so a lot of people with the online space decided they wanted to jump in and create their own businesses, but then they were like, oh, well, how what do I create? What do I go do? Do I go partner with a company and become an influencer marketer and have, you know, have a company that I just sell products for? Do I become a network marketer? Like, do I create my own coaching business? Like what could I do? And so I found myself counseling a lot of people and doing strategy calls with a lot of people. And so I decided to take all of that knowledge that I have of 18 years of business experience. My degrees, all of the businesses that I’ve had that have been successes and failures, I’ve learned way more from the failures and the successes and Then put that in a little bit of a book.

Jessica Green: Um, just a simple book called Super Power to Super Profits. Um, and it’s just me walking through. How do you find your own superpowers as it relates to entrepreneurship, and then utilizing those to create the business and empire of your dreams? So I always tell people when I start off coaching in that realm is if you if you create yourself just another job out there that you have to get up and go do every day, you’re not going to be excited about it. It’s just going to be like working that 9 to 5. But if we can create something that comes from passion, something that comes from what you get really excited to go work on, and you could jump out of bed every single morning and ready to walk across the hallway to that office home office of yours to work on your business. And you are so excited you’ve now created something that you will absolutely love, you will adore, and you will make a lot of money at. Because people know when you absolutely love and adore what you do every single day. And those are the people who are going to want to partner with you because they can see it and feel it, and it exudes from you.

Jessica Green: So my superpower to super profit is saying, hey, let’s go figure out what you’re really good at. What do your friends always ask you for advice on? What do you feel like you could do for hours and hours, and then look up at the clock and go, oh my gosh, I cannot believe I just spent five hours doing that. I could do that for five more hours and it wouldn’t even faze me. And no, I’m not talking about scrolling social media. That is not a career path. Um, because I think anybody can make time disappear like that. Um, so I’m very clear about not letting that happen. Um, but yeah, just I walk them through some questions and I walk through my own story. Um, as a young adult, actually a teenager to young adult. And some of the things that I went through, and it took me all the way until really my 40s to figure out what my superpower actually was. And so if I can, uh, speed that up for somebody who wants to get into the entrepreneurial journey, that’s what that book is meant to do. And then it walks them through some of the tech, how to start putting some things in place to build up your business online.

Stone Payton: So what was that experience like writing the the book? Did it come together pretty easily, or were were pieces of it harder than than others? I’d love to hear what that journey was like.

Jessica Green: If I could do it all over again, I would do it differently again. Another way I could speed up someone’s journey, I would point them in a different direction than what I took. I really wanted the book to just be a lead magnet, if I’m being quite honest with you. I had a lot to say. But it wasn’t the book that, like if Jessica Green was going to go write a book and it be like all of the things that I want to teach and share and show all of who I am, I wouldn’t. This isn’t the book. This is more of a lead magnet book, and I wish I would have done it the other way around. First of all. Second of all, I would really do my research on how you publish a book or self publish a book, or find the right company to work with. Through that process, I picked a company that I thought was a good idea. It came with some business coaching. Along with this book writing program. I would have gone to a company that was just a book writing program because I did need some help. I needed a mentor. I needed a coach. I’d never wrote a book before. I did know that I wanted to self-publish. I want because it was a lead magnet. I just wanted something simple. But the process was interesting. We’ll just we’ll just say that it was interesting. The book is written and it is out there. I can’t say that it’s like my masterpiece in any way, shape or form. So I’m looking to the second book that I write, but it’s a great book to just get people started in. Hey, I need to figure out what my superpowers are. I want to I want to start my own online business. I need someone to kind of walk me through those first few steps. And that’s what the book’s intended purpose was. So I’m okay with that. But the next book, stay tuned, it’ll be much better. All right.

Stone Payton: So you have another one in you. And I have to believe, while certainly it’s provided value to the people you’re trying to serve, I suspect it probably helped you crystallize your own thinking and equip you to even be that much better at what you were doing, just because you invested the energy to commit some of these ideas to paper, and really have to think them through and figure out a way to articulate them for others. I bet it helped you to be a better practitioner.

Jessica Green: Oh yeah. Absolutely. It’s like putting something in a really concise, organized format on how to teach. The one great thing is that I had already created a 12 week program that I was putting clients through, so I kind of took that 12 week program. That was my process of what I put clients through, and I kind of made that some of the chapters of the book pulled out like seven of the 12 different modules and made that into my book, with the exception of, like the first chapter, which tells my story and kind of how I uncovered what I’m really good at, which is problem solving, um, which is my superpower strategy and problem solving. But I take that was also really fun and cathartic. Maybe be the right word. Is telling a kind of embarrassing story about myself that I learned at 13 years old. Was was a like game changer for my life. Um, and telling that story out loud for anybody to pick up a book and read about that was interesting. Kind of cathartic, though.

Stone Payton: I would think the answer to this question probably changes over time as you evolve, as the work evolves. But I’ll ask you at this point now, you’ve been at it a while. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Jessica Green: Oh, being a part of like so many different businesses. So we have a new client come in and we have a mastermind for our hub members every Wednesday morning. Um, and we have an accelerator program that’s like an 8 to 10 week program. We only take 12 people in at a time and so that we can spend time on their businesses, but it’s watching those businesses unfold. For example, I have, um, you know, we have some clients that maybe started with us eight, nine months ago, and you’re just now starting to see because they are really just doing it on their own. They didn’t join an accelerator. They’re just every week plugging away at building their business and watching some of that come to life. Now, having a just knowing, like when you see their business launch online and they start getting their clients and things start flourishing for them, and you start seeing their stuff on social media, you’re like, I had a little piece of that. If they if if we wouldn’t have gotten involved or connected, would they be where they’re at? Would their dreams be coming true? Would their empire be being built? Last week we got to walk through, um, a lady who’s in just a regular hub member of ours that shows up every Wednesday morning consistently and has been building out a math tutoring business, an online math tutoring business for, um, sixth grade to like through 12th grade, I think. Um, and she does it out of her home, but she really wanted to take this online and be able to do this for more people and do like, classes and watching all of her tech pieces finally get to completion so that she can launch everything and watching it unfold and seeing the website and seeing it’s just like, you know, that you just took somebody from working this like, boring 9 to 5 that they hate to actually making that dream of theirs become reality. That to me, there’s nothing like that.

Stone Payton: So are these people finding you because of the tech you have in place? Or I guess I’m interested in how the whole sales and marketing thing works for almost everyone I talked to. But in your case, like, are you out there shaking the trees? Or you’ve set things up so that they come shake the trees? Or how does that cause you have to, I guess you have to eat your own cooking to a large degree, right?

Jessica Green: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. If I don’t show up online and have all the things in place online, how would anybody ever trust me? Or I heard me right and I will in no way, shape or form, uh, say that I’m perfect at those things. I just actually am super transparent to my coaching clients, too. So I had somebody call me the other day that just is one of our hub members that needed a little extra from me, and I try to always do that as much as I can. And, uh, she was asking me some questions about the front end of her business, like the getting of traffic. Right. And it’s just it’s not our specialty. We focus on the back end, like, we can tell you everything to plug in so that when you’re generating the traffic, everything goes on. Automation. Um, like, you go make a reel or a post or a TikTok and we we can help you set everything up on the back end so that everything is automated from there on out. So you could do one reel and everything sets on automation all the way to conversion, maybe 14 touch points later so that you can convert a viewer into a buyer. So we do the back end. We don’t teach people how to do social media. So when she called me and started asking me some questions, I’m like, listen, I got social media out there. I stay very present online. I have someone that helps me with some of that stuff, but I can’t coach you on that because I’m not good at it. It’s not my favorite part.

Jessica Green: I don’t do a whole lot of it, but we do have to do that for our business. So we work on it and we bring in coaches and mentors of our own for the front end of things, because that isn’t that isn’t what my business model is, and it is not our forte. Um, but I will say being super active out there on all the social platforms is one of the things that we do. But for ten, well, 14 years, myself and a business partner that I brought in, uh, we’ve been in the network marketing space wasn’t what I started off in. I fell into it in an economic downturn. I was the girl that ran from everybody. I’m no longer building in the space now, but I did for 14 years. And that grows you a very massive network of people. Um, that’s the one thing that I absolutely love about network marketing. And so because we were very successful in that top 1% in the industry, both her and I, in different businesses, um, we have a large network. And so it’s it’s a lot of hustle out there grinding, getting our own. You used a term and I don’t remember what what you said exactly was like, you know, just going out and getting our own clients. Then we do also do social media. We are just now getting into the ad space of getting some ads out there. Also not my forte. I don’t teach people how to do that. It is not my thing. But I can, you know, find some people that can help me with that because I’m very resourceful.

Speaker4: Well, that’s.

Stone Payton: Such an important point, is lean on what you’re good at and set up systems that will help you really just leverage that to the nth degree and go get best in class. Help in the areas that were in the holes you need to plug, right?

Jessica Green: Yeah, exactly, exactly. The other thing we do too is we because we both came from a lot of experience in network marketing. Um, while our company helps a lot of network marketers, we’re not a network marketing company, but we do have an affiliate program for our company. And because no network marketing so well, it was like super easy for us to deploy an affiliate marketing part of our business. So we have a lot of people that are our hub members, that are also affiliates for us, because they know they can go out and sell our service. They believe in us. They’re already hub members, and then they can also make some money with us too. So that’s another way that we drive traffic to us.

Stone Payton: Well, you clearly have the passion for your work. I can see it in your eyes. I know our listeners can hear it in your voice. But I did want to ask hobbies, interests, passions outside the scope of your work, like a lot of our listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Is there anything you nerd out about outside the scope of this work?

Jessica Green: So I, I love when this question comes up because I think I’m a little neurotic in my in my entrepreneurial journey, though, I know it’s not healthy at all times, but, you know, I’m not just working on my business. I’m working on so many other people’s dreams and empires that I find that is also a hobby. I say all the time, if you sit down with me for five minutes and we go have coffee, or we go to have a bite to eat, and we start talking in any way, shape or form that you could start a business or you like doing this. I’m trying to turn it into a business for you and show you how to monetize it, because I literally have fun doing that. So I spend a lot of time I don’t want to call it working because I really enjoy what I do. Um, but outside of that, um, I have three kiddos, uh, one son and two bonus daughters who are grown and have big girl jobs. We love to do stuff with our kids. We love to travel. Um, actually, as we speak, my husband is without me over in Europe, um, in Paris right now. And so we love to travel and we love to do things like that. We love to entertain at our house. And yeah, I mean, we’re pretty simple people, though.

Stone Payton: All right, before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of actionable things. I’ll call them pro tips. Just a couple of, you know, start thinking about this or read this or don’t do this kind of thing. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out to Jessica and her team, have a conversation with them, learn about what they’re doing. But let’s leave them with a couple of things to be noodling on between now and then.

Jessica Green: Yeah, I mean, my biggest piece of advice is, is just find them. Whatever you’re doing, go find someone who’s done it and has succeeded at it, but also maybe had some failures behind it because you learn more in those failures than you do the successes. It’s just the unfortunate piece about business. But, um, so when I, when I start coaching people, I actually tell them to go find a few people on social media that are doing what they want to do, but are only about 18 to 24 months ahead of them, and they’re successful. And the reason I say that is because, of course, I could go find the most successful person in my entire industry that’s been doing this for 10 or 15 years and model my behavior after them, but they’re at a different point in their journey. They’re so far beyond what I’m trying to accomplish right now. I’ll get there, but only modeling off of the activity and the things that they’re doing now kind of sets people back. So I try to have people look at somebody who’s more like 18 to 24 months ahead of them and looks like it’s becoming successful because the behaviors that you’re going to go and see or they’re breadcrumbs that they leave behind, um, are going to be what you need to do over the next 18 to 24 months, which is the most important right now.

Jessica Green: So find a mentor, find a coach. But maybe not someone who’s so far ahead of you that they’ve almost lost reality of. I always say it’s it’s almost the very same thing in network marketing. It’s like someone who first comes in and is just getting started versus the, you know, million dollar a year earner. That’s like been there, done that, spent in the industry for ten years and did all the things. They are not doing the same things every single day as the things that they want you doing when you first come in. Because the things you need to do when you first come in are quite different than what you do when you’ve been on your journey for 10 to 15 years. Believe in yourself and go find a good person to partner with. That’s like a mentor or a coach that can help walk you through some of the struggles and be there on the hard days. Best advice I could give?

Stone Payton: Well, I think it’s marvelous advice. Thank you for that. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work? I want to make sure they have access to the book that you described. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Jessica Green: Yeah, I think the easiest way and the easiest one to remember is my personal website, which is just green. I got the dot green, not a.com, just dot green is actually an ending to a website. So um, just dot green is how you can find my personal website. And from there you can get to our business website too which is self made hub. So yeah.

Stone Payton: Well Jessica, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast. Thank you for your passion, your enthusiasm, your insight, your perspective. It’s uh, it’s been a marvelous way to invest a Tuesday morning and we sure appreciate you.

Jessica Green: Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s been fun.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jessica Green with Self Made and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.