getting a big-girl job in telecommunications, then working my way up the corporate ladder. I was doing amazing and thought I had my forever job, but life got in the way. When I got pregnant with my daughter, I was very sick and was hospitalized for eight out of the nine months that I was pregnant. The company decided it couldn’t hold my territory for me, and they replaced me. I was devastated because I had been the family breadwinner and insurance carrier, and now I was the hospital sitter. When I worked for the telecommunications company, I spent a lot of time helping momand-pop companies learn about social media, teaching them how to market themselves even without a budget. Before I had done so, these small businesses had marketing plans that consisted of simply spraying flyers around the mall parking lot, shoving them underneath people’s windshield wipers. So even though the company had replaced me, I had developed 8
relationships with these business owners and they still reached out to me with questions. I loved doing that because I love technology and psychology, and that mixed both worlds for me, so something just clicked. I was like, “I really enjoy doing this. And it comes naturally to me and I really don’t want to go back to corporate America because they just let me go when I was sick.” So I started NOW Marketing Group in 2010, and it’s been amazing ever since.
but PEOPLE. And my employees are humans— they are more than the numbers that they’re producing this month. There’s a backstory to it. You don’t have to be all business—there is another way. As small businesses or entrepreneurs, that’s the win. That’s why we’re winning today, because people get that. They have options. They want to be treated like a person who is valued, not a cog in the wheel.
Dennis: Tell me a little Dennis: What tools and bit about what NOW lessons did you take from Marketing Group offers. your time in corporate America? Jessika: NOW is based on really caring for our Jessika: Systems. I value customers. That’s the systems and having things approach we use to serve repeatable. Because you everyone we come into can’t do everything. And contact with, from our you shouldn’t want to if team members and our you want to grow, because community members to otherwise you’ll get stuck. our clients. I firmly believe So I loved the systems and that’s the only way to build having everything in its sustainable, long-term place. growth. I also loved the things that I learned I didn’t like What we do is called about corporate America, relationship marketing. because then I was able Relationship marketing to reinvent them. Like, is a new way of thinking my customers didn’t about business in general. have to just be numbers If we look at today, 90%
