Redefining Success: Using AI, Empowerment, and Vision to Build a Life You Love with CEO & Founder of Behind the Design, Jacqueline Green

What if the very tools you’ve been avoiding could actually free you from burnout, from busywork, and from playing small in your business?

In this energizing and eye-opening episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca Powers sits down with entrepreneur, AI strategist, and podcast host Jacqueline Green, founder of Behind the Design and Your Fractional Marketing Team. Together, they explore how embracing AI tools can empower women to scale their passions into real businesses without sacrificing their peace or purpose.

From navigating burnout to letting go of control, Jackie shares how shifting your mindset, embracing tech, and prioritizing you can move you from overwhelmed to unstoppable. Whether you’re a solopreneur juggling it all or someone dreaming of turning your side hustle into a sustainable business, this conversation will inspire you to step into your CEO energy—with strategy, clarity, and grace.

AI Isn’t the Enemy

Learn how Jacqueline moved beyond content creation to using AI for systems, checklists, and business-building insights.

From Passion to Profit

Discover what it really takes to grow a solo venture into a million-dollar business.

CEO vs. Worker Bee

Why releasing control and building systems is your path to freedom and long-term success.

Burnout Recovery Starts Within

How to reprioritize your own wellbeing and reconnect to your bigger “why.”

Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

• Jacqueline shares how burnout led her from corporate marketing to interior design and how that pivot opened the door to entrepreneurship.
• Becca and Jacqueline explore the emotional and energetic cost of overworking, self-neglect, and staying in situations that no longer support growth.
• Jacqueline opens up about the impact of hearing "You are a survivor" from her late father and how that message continues to fuel her belief in herself.
• Becca and Jacqueline reflect on the journey of becoming a true CEO and how mindset, support, and structure are essential to sustainable growth.
• Jacqueline explains why prioritizing her mental health, nurturing her marriage, and being present as a grandmother have helped her stay grounded and empowered.

Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:

• “You are stronger than you know, and you will get through whatever’s thrown at you.” – Jacqueline Green
• “We doubt ourselves sometimes… we stay in situations that may not be horrible, but they’re not contributing to our growth.” – Becca Powers 
• “Failure is actually a good thing.” – Jacqueline Green
• “You are not doing your business any good if you are so entrenched in it and can’t pull yourself out.” – Jacqueline Green
• “I actually get more done by taking that time for myself than I would have by not doing it.” – Jacqueline Green

About Jacqueline

Jacqueline Green is an entrepreneur, AI consultant, national speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping business owners scale through smart marketing and AI-driven strategies. As the founder of Behind the Design and Your Fractional Marketing Team, she brings expertise in marketing, AI strategy, real estate investing, and interior design. Through her new podcast, The Hobby to Profitability Podcast, Jacqueline shares actionable insights to help entrepreneurs turn their passions into profitable businesses.

Connect with Jacqueline Green

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Join Jacqueline Green for the Marketing Momentum Workshop—a private, 4-hour session designed to help small business owners map out a clear, focused plan for growth.

Power Links

• Join Becca in her Facebook Community - The Dragonfly Effect, Where High-Performing Professionals Chase Big Dreams: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1C4z83krsn/
• Purchase Becca’s Book - A Return to Radiance, The POWER Method to Ignite Your Soul and Unleash Your Potential: https://www.beccapowers.com/a-return-to-radiance
• Invite Becca to Speak: https://www.beccapowers.com/keynotes
• Grab Becca’s Free EBook, The High Performer’s Path, The 8 Forces of Potential for Mindset Mastery: https://www.beccapowers.com/

Follow Becca Powers

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We Want to Hear From You!

What part of this episode made you rethink how you're showing up in your business and in your life? Are you leading with intention—or stuck in survival mode? 

Share your thoughts, tag a friend, or let us know your biggest takeaway!

Becca Powers:
Welcome to another episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, and I know you guys are loving my Brand Builders friends, but I have another friend from Brand Builders Group—Jackie Green—and I am so excited to introduce you to her today because we're gonna talk about something we haven't talked about yet: AI. Jackie is an AI expert and the CEO and founder of Behind the Design, and I would just like to welcome you to the show, Jackie.

Jacqueline Green:
Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

Becca Powers:
Yeah, I'm excited too. And as we were talking about before we hit record, I'm like, I haven't had an AI expert on—and with my tech background, I am so excited to open up that conversation. But I always like to ask my guests first, what's your background? How did you get to this point where you're passionate about talking about AI? What happened to get you here?

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah, I was in corporate marketing for years—15 years. I eventually left the corporate arena and decided to go out as a freelancer/consultant in marketing. Eventually, I burned out. This gets to the AI story. I burned out because in the freelance world, if you're not working, you're not making money. The whole idea of going out on my own was so I could spend more time with my kids and go to their events and so forth.

So I went back to school, became an interior designer, eventually worked for three different architecture firms, and started teaching. I realized that I could actually help business owners in that space grow their business. That's how Behind the Design came about—we started helping interior designers with different aspects of their business. That evolved into architecture and contractors, and it's just grown from there.

Part of that journey was the AI part, and I didn't even realize it until last year that we were actually early adopters of AI—not intentionally—but all of a sudden I was using it. When you first start using AI, you feel like you're cheating, but then you realize there's so many things within AI that can improve the efficiency of your business, especially if it's a side hustle or a solo entrepreneurship. You can get so much more done using some of these tools—beyond just chat—but really using them to build efficiency, get rid of repetitive tasks.

That's where I started doing it. I started exploring even more than what I was already doing and started testing different products, seeing what worked in my business, what I could recommend, how I could talk about it—and that's where we got to.

Becca Powers:
Nice. So I want to talk more about AI, but first you hit on something that I think is just still really relevant, because it's part of my backstory too: working yourself into burnout. I feel that so many people listening to this right now could probably relate, but I would love for you to share maybe a lesson that you learned from it.

Before you do, I just want to shape this a little bit more: I feel like when you're in burnout, you feel so stuck, right? You can't see what's possible. What I would love for you to share is a lesson learned, but also give that hope for possibility if anybody's going through that. Once I got through my burnout, I tapped back into passions. You went into interior design; I went into writing and coaching and consulting. I went into the professional development space, geeked out, became a super nerd, and got really happy.

I’d love for you to talk about that—what's your take on lessons learned and what might be possible on the other side?

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah. When I burned out, it was really hard. I lost a big client, and it hurt. It really did hurt. I realized they had every reason to leave me. I had burned out. I wasn't offering the service they had come to expect, and that was on me. I realized there had to be a better way. That’s when I started searching.

Throughout my entire journey, I have been an entrepreneur off and on since 2011. More recently, I've had this business since 2019. There have been days that I’ve been like, I am done. I’m quitting. This is ridiculous. This is way too hard. I’ll go back, get a job, whatever. It took me a long time to figure out how to get through those things, to really believe in myself.

It all came back to mindset—where my mind was. I tell myself every day that I can get through anything. I am stronger than I know. I'm going to get through it. It’s just a matter of believing in myself.

Yes, there are a lot of tactics I use. I might write down: what are our priorities? Where are we going? Let’s refocus the vision. But at the end of the day, I know—based on the ups and a lot of lows—that I can make it through anything. I might not feel like it in the moment, but if I keep reminding myself...

My father used to call me when I first moved out to Colorado after I finished college. He used to leave voicemail messages. He's since passed, and I would die to have one of those messages. But he would always tell me: I'm a survivor. I can do anything. I can overcome anything. He's proud of me. To this day, I still remember that going through my head—especially now that I've lost him. That little message—a dad gives a daughter—was so powerful that it still affects me 30 years later.

To be there and hear that... I just keep re-saying that to myself when I go through hard times. But I’ll be honest—there have been days where I was like, clear out everything, I’m done, shut it down. There’s no way I’m getting through this. Then I go to bed. Next day I’m like, nope. We're gonna do it. We made commitments. We're doing this.

It's just a matter of continuously believing in yourself and constantly— even when you don’t feel like it—constantly telling yourself: you can get through this, you can do this, you're going to make this work.

Becca Powers:
That message is so powerful. I have goosebumps all over my body. Through my own story and now working with people, I have learned that too. So many messages in what you shared. I’m trying to refrain from going down multiple rabbit holes right now because I could go in so many different directions.

But you said something: we are so much stronger than we know. I really just want that to hit with the audience because we doubt ourselves sometimes. We doubt what we're capable of. We stay in situations that may not be horrible, but they're not contributing to our growth. And then there are situations where we start tolerating the intolerable.

That message—"You are so much stronger than you know"—is such a beautiful gift of wisdom to the audience. So thank you for sharing that.

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah, absolutely. It's also about having grace with yourself. Understand that life is full of mistakes and you're going to make wrong turns, but it's okay. These are things we learn from. Failure is actually a good thing.

Embracing AI for Efficiency and Growth

Becca Powers:
So kind of what do you have to say about embracing things like ChatGPT?

Jacqueline Green:
Sure. So of course, like everyone else, we start with ChatGPT. That's like the, you know, first step. And at first we were using it as a content creator. That’s what a lot of people use it for. But when I realized I could start using it for things like how do I build my systems out? How do I build checklists? How do I improve efficiencies? How do I approach something I don't know how to do—and I can ask questions about this?

How do I dive into more information? And so think about it beyond just content creation—how can I use this and use expertise? It makes you smarter. I actually saw a stat the other day that all these AI tools are actually making us smarter.

Becca Powers:
Ooh.

Jacqueline Green:
I know. I was pretty dang excited about that one. I’m like, like, yeah.
That’s like the first step—you’re using chat, you’re starting to kind of build out systems and processes. Systems and processes within a business—if you’re wanting to go, I talk a lot about going from a zero to a million. How do you get to a million-dollar revenue business with AI?

I personally think this is going to revolutionize how those who have solo entrepreneurship, have small businesses that are under five people, are really going to be able to compete on a much larger scale.

I like that. So if you think about what you do in a day, what are those repetitive tasks that [you do] over and over and over? I’ll give you an example. I talked to a design-build company. A design-build is interior design all the way through construction. And the interior design director was telling me, "Well, I have to enter this information into this system, and then I have to enter it manually into this system, and then I enter it manually into this system, and then I add this all to my spreadsheet." And I’m like...

That is way too many things for human error.

And so where, you know, you transpose a couple numbers—you’re ordering a cabinet that is the wrong size, you’re ordering the wrong amount of wallpaper—whatever that is, it could really up and increase the cost of that project.

So how do we build efficiencies within the systems that you have today? And that’s looking at different tools. Just using something like an Otter.ai, which is a note taker, is huge for small businesses because...

If I’m on Zoom, which so many of us are, my Otter automatically comes on. It takes a transcription of the entire meeting. It gives me key takeaways. It gives me who needs to do what, a summary of the meeting. I can then have that sent to my client as well. Everybody’s on the same page. I’ve improved communication. I’ve really narrowed down what I need to do after this meeting. And I was able to focus more in the meeting.
I mean, that’s just one simple, easy tool.

Becca Powers:
No, but that’s a really powerful point because, you know, I, I would consider myself old school. I’ve been in corporate America 20 years, and my note-taking—I’m a like, this is serious.

And even though I do notes, I’m still just like avidly writing down. But, you know, just... think about that. Like if I actually hit record or, you know, went into my settings and said do auto-summarization to my AI tools, that would relieve me of one task that I’m doing.

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah. And I think Zoom has it now automatically too, that you can do. So a lot of these different softwares allow you to do it automatically without a separate—I just happen to be using Otter AI and continue using it.

Becca Powers:
Yeah, yeah.

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah. So there’s a lot of tools out there, but that’s just a simple thing. If I could summarize that our meeting—and there are three takeaways—I know, okay, I can get these done. I can also make sure that I’m in connection with my client. And you...

You don’t realize AI is being used behind the scenes. Just like if you’re on Netflix and you watch one show and then it’s telling you, "Hey, you might like these other shows." That’s AI. That’s not a person back there going, oh, this person watched this, they might like this. No, it’s AI that is actually looking at how you’re using this product and making additional recommendations based on how you’re using it.

Same with Facebook and Instagram, any type of social media typically—how are you using it? What are you talking about? What are you liking, what are you engaging with? And then they show you more of that. And so it’s all around us, whether you know it or not. And I know a lot of people are very hesitant on it, but there is just so many opportunities to get more done than what you could, especially for a small business.

When you feel so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work that has to be done—but you don’t necessarily have the money or the revenue to hire a big staff. Yeah. Then you may not even want to in the first place.

Becca Powers:
A hundred percent. Like there are so many, um, tools out there that can help us. Like I haven’t invested in it yet, but I was even like looking at Opus Clips, which has gotten a lot of...

Jacqueline Green:
We love Opus. We use it a lot.

Becca Powers:
Do you?

Jacqueline Green:
Yes.

Becca Powers:
And I was just like, oh, it uses AI to take the highest points, turn ’em into a handful of clips. It gives a summary, and I’m like... Like I have paid—as an entrepreneur—thousands of dollars over the course of years to have other people do that for me. And I’m like, you serious? I could just upload it in Opus and then it’s done?

And so I think that, um, you know, as you talk about this—the budding entrepreneur, the solopreneur, and the small teams—think of how AI... and I just love what you’re saying. Again, I’m like, ugh, because I wanna say like three things, but I’m just like... it’s so powerful to embrace AI not only to save you money, but also to modernize your business so that you can focus on the things that are most important—serving your clients.

Jacqueline Green:
Absolutely. And really elevating what so many small business owners don’t realize is—when they start their business, their business becomes all about them. So whether they spend 10 years, 20 years in this business and they go to sell it, there is no business there because it’s all about them. You can’t just pull them out. That’s why systems and processes are so important, and I believe AI can really help with that.

And it can help, again, with all the things that you’re not getting done. How do we serve our clients better? How do we also become CEO of our companies rather than working in our companies constantly?

Becca Powers:
Ooh, that just gave me the goosebumps because that is a hard mindset.

Jacqueline Green:
It’s so hard. And so many people go into the business and you love your business. I mean, it is your passion. This is coming from your heart. But you are not doing your business any good if you are so entrenched in it and can’t pull yourself out, can’t take vacation, can’t operate at the right level.

And that’s why you really have to start letting go of things and become that CEO of your business—whether that’s hiring someone, whether it’s using AI tools to help you get more done. You really have to kind of step back and realize that you are building an entity beyond yourself.

Becca Powers:
I love that so much and I wish I would’ve gotten that wisdom like three years ago. I had to—I had to fail a couple more times, Jackie, before I was able to catch that.

Jacqueline Green:
It’s so hard. It really is, because... I mean, if you’re doing what you love to do, it is hard to pull away. I remember at a point when I stopped having to write content so much—I love to develop content. For me, it is one of my passions—but to let go and let somebody else on my team start building some of our content was really hard for me because it was something I enjoyed.

But at the time, it was taking me four hours to write one blog post. That is not a good use of my time. Now with AI, we’ve sped up blog posts to less than an hour. But four hours of a CEO’s time—and if you’re putting two podcasts out or two blog posts out a week—I mean, that’s eight hours. You’re losing one whole day just by writing.

Yes, those are time-consuming things, and even though I love ’em, now if I write one or write something, it’s because I want to. There’s a passion or something extra. But when I started letting go of that, it was hard. And then as I did, I’m like, this has gotten a lot easier. And now when I come up with my blog ideas, I’m like, "Hey," and I send off, "This is the summary, this is what I’m thinking it should go," and I let somebody else actually do the work. And that feels really good—that I can kind of direct more than actually do.

Vision, Priorities, and Personal Empowerment

Jacqueline Green:
At the very top, our revenue goal for this year. Every week I rewrite it. I keep that in mind.
Where are we going as a company—and revenue's only one side of that, right? Sure. I mean, there’s a lot more we wanna accomplish, but it is easy to say, okay, this is our revenue goal. If we wanna do these other things, we need to hit this revenue goal.
So I am constantly going, okay, the why behind it. Why are we doing this? Who are we helping? Keeping our end clients in mind, and then taking, how can I better serve them? How can I make my products better without, you know, creating excess of work? I’m not trying to create excess work.

But I’m really under that revenue. I also have the priorities for this week. These are the three things that we absolutely need to make sure they get done. And then I break it down by employees as well and help them with their priorities so that we’re constantly focused on the right things and not just unnecessary work that we think, oh, well this won’t take me but five minutes, when really it takes you an hour.
It’s really important to stay focused on where you’re going and how you’re going to get there and work on the things that are really going to move that needle.

Becca Powers:
I love that. And I wanna just expand on it a little bit.
So I love that you’re talking priorities in business. And then, you know, I think we can also use that topic and talk about personal life too. But in business too, I have found...
I am still working full-time and I basically work two full-time jobs. Yeah. So eventually there’ll be a retirement from tech, but I started off as a passion project. Five years later is now like a full business, right?

Jacqueline Green:
Oh yeah.

Becca Powers:
So it’s awesome. I’m happy and I’m working my ass off.
So I have had to learn a lot of, you know, what you’re talking about, out of necessity too, because I only have so many hours in a week.
And I realized that same thing—I was working on at one point social media, then I was working on blogs. Like I was doing all the things. ’Cause it’s my work. It’s like mine, right. My passion.
Yeah. I could do this. Yeah. And I enjoyed it. And, and there was the joy to it too, like you were saying.
But what I realized is that if I really wanted to have a business and not a passion project, then my relationship with what was most important and who was able to do it needed to change.

Jacqueline Green:
Yeah, absolutely.

Becca Powers:
And so I love what you said about the priorities because I think it’s also, you know, as you’re maybe turning your passion project into a business, or if you’re already in it, it’s easy to get blindsided by task.
But every week I have to come back to, what’s the most important things that need to get done this week to move the business forward?

And how you’re talking about those priorities—if I don’t do that every week, I get lost in the sauce. I’ll go down a rabbit hole. I mean, I’ll even go down a rabbit hole in ChatGPT ’cause it’ll be like, "Do you wanna explore how to do this?" And I’m like, yes I do.

Jacqueline Green:
Yes I do. I’m so excited.

Becca Powers:
Thanks for asking. And then I come out like two hours later, I’m like, whoa, what happened?

Jacqueline Green:
Exactly. I mean, it’s same as Chat’s become like the new social media for a lot of people. You could be in there and hang out for quite a while and waste time and be like, what happened the last two hours? Where did that go?
Perplexity is another one. It does a lot of research and I just love it, so it’ll propose questions.
"You wanna know more about this?" I’m like, yeah, yeah, I do. This has nothing to do with what I’m working on.

Becca Powers:
I know. You just like keep going. But I also think, you know, as it relates—you know, we’ve opened up the conversation talking about burnout and stuff like that too.
And what I realized also is like, I’m very into meaningful work. So whether I’m at my corporate job or I am doing my passion projects, both of them, my heart’s tied to. So I feel I, I get a lot of meaning from what I do.
But what I realized is that I would always prioritize work over myself.
That’s ultimately what led—like in my version of burnout—that’s what happened, is that I was off the priority list.

So I just wanna tie that beginning part of the conversation back for the listeners too, that as you talked about priorities kind of being one of the ways that you can stay empowered as a business owner, use AI to stay on more of the top priorities, but also prioritizing yourself is one way that as you’re working your ass off, you can keep yourself out of burnout.

So I don’t know if you have anything you’d like to say about that.

Jacqueline Green:
Absolutely. This is a huge thing for me because I came from an environment—I was taught to work hard. The more you work, the harder you work, the more you’re gonna get advanced.
Then I went into corporate and that’s very much—they want you to work a lot of hours. They want you to really push yourself and that’s how you get ahead.

And so it took me a very long time before I realized that I was not doing myself any good if I wasn’t taking care of me.
I raised two kids, but they’re now adults, and I put them before everything else. I put my marriage a lot of times before everything else, and it dawned on me—I’m like, hold on a second.
I’m really burning myself out.

So just one thing that I realized was just the simple act of working out, going to the gym a few times a week, wasn’t so much for my health physically as much as it was for my health mentally.
Oh, I could tell a big difference in productivity, in attitude and how I was feeling about things if I worked out on a regular basis. But I would feel guilty taking that hour to work out and half hour to drive there.

And then I go to a pretty nice gym—and that’s expensive. I would have all this guilt around that:
"Oh, I should be getting this project done," or "I said I would do this. I need to get it done."
I actually get more done by taking that time for myself than I would have by not doing it, because I can absolutely now know by knowing myself when I haven’t gone to the gym in a while.

Now I’m not some big, huge, you know, muscle-driven person. It could be just a matter of going there, doing some lifting, some light lifting and going to the steam room. It could be something as simple as that.
But it does—it has such an impact on my mental health that I have to make sure that it is scheduled in my day.

And there are other things like that. My husband works a weird shift—he is gone for days and back four days. So when he is home, I wanna make sure that I am taking advantage and deliberately spending time with him.
Not just, "Hey, in passing, glad you’re home," but actually spending time, talking with him, enjoying him, having a nice dinner together. Doing things like that—that’s prioritizing my overall self-care because he’s such an important aspect of my life and staying connected with him actually makes me stronger.

And he is a huge fan of mine and he’s constantly giving me a lot more support than I feel at times. I need to make sure I prioritize that time with him.

So there are things like that that—and I don’t ever second guess the time I spend with my adult kids because I realize that.
Now we have two grandbabies that have just arrived in the last two months. And I’m making sure that, hey, I work so—and they’re in Southern California—so that I can go out there every other month and see those babies and be a part of those babies’ lives.

So when you start shifting that mindset—and I don’t know if that just came with age, if it came with just all the failures and wisdom that came out of those—but I realized that I was not doing anybody any good if I wasn’t taking care of myself.

And that I was gonna die a young death if I didn’t start taking better care of myself.
And so I joke with the kids—I’m like, "I’m living to 102."

Becca Powers:
That’s where I’m at now too. I’m like, yeah, you’re gonna be stuck with me for a while. That came out too.
And I’m like, y’all, I’m gonna live a long time so you better get used to having me around.

Jacqueline Green:
I love what you—focusing on my health. I feel great right now. I really do.

From Burnout to CEO Energy: Leveraging AI and Self-Belief in Business

Becca Powers:
Awesome. Yeah. Well, I just looked down—we’re at 30 minutes. It’s sad because if I could keep going.
But I wanna ask you two more things. So one is, how can the audience stay in touch with you and explore maybe working with you or finding out more about what you do?

Jacqueline Green:
Sure. Um, my website is behindthedesignco.com, behind the design co dot com. And I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on YouTube as well.
And then I have a podcast called Hobby to Profitability, which talks a lot about what we’ve talked about—how do you go from that hobby or that passion to making a million dollars.

Becca Powers:
That is awesome. And I was like, you’re a woman after my own heart. I’m like, we’re friends now.
Um, so, um, guys, I’ll have all of that in the show notes.
And last question for you—it’s more of a statement, but in a powerful summary, what empowering message do you have for our listeners to conclude today?

Jacqueline Green:
I think it’s believing in yourself.
You gotta believe in yourself and that you can do it. And there are gonna be days that you don’t feel that way. But just remember, you are stronger than you know, and you will get through whatever’s thrown at you.

Becca Powers:
Woo. I love it. I got the goosebumps again.
I’m so happy that you came on the show, Jackie. Thank you so much for being our guest.

Jacqueline Green:
It was great being here. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

Becca Powers:
It was. All right. I’ll see ya.