Jason Resnick, a developer and business owner is with us today for an exclusive interview so without further ado, let’s hear it from the man himself.
WPJuicer: Hi Jason, thank you so much for taking some time out from your busy schedule for us. Can you please introduce yourself to our readers? How did you start your career? Who motivated and inspired you?
Jason: I started my career in the late 90s when I came out of college I had already been working close to 35 hours per week coding. Since then I’ve worked for large consultant firms, Fortune 100 companies, and small boutique agencies. I knew at a very young age that I wasn’t going to want to work for someone else, had no idea though what it would look like, until about 2002-3 when I was laid off from a consultant firm.
They were a large firm that put a lot of their eggs into the startup world’s basket and at that time when the.COM era busted up, I was left without a job. However, I felt at that time that it was as good as any to go at it on my own.
I had a roster of freelance clients at the time and thought that I had a skill that was in demand as a web developer and this was my shot. About 18 months later I found myself searching for a full-time job.
What I didn’t have skills in was marketing, sales, client management, contracts, on and offboarding clients, all the business aspects that I didn’t need to have when I was working for someone else. I found another job, only this time I went back with the intention of learning all I can about the business, about sales and marketing, and everything else I could so that when the time was right again, I wouldn’t find myself back at the same position.
In 2010, I quit my full-time job and haven’t looked back since. I’ve been developing ecommerce websites and helping online businesses get more customers, repeat customers, and create raving fans of their brand. I do this by helping them build a strategy and implement behavioral marketing through automation, email marketing, and on-site personalization.
I also help web developers and designers live the life of their own design through coaching and community so they can specialize in their businesses and build a predictable income. I run a community called Feast Club that’s only $5/month so that other developers and designers can fast track their learning by hearing it from others.
It’s a community built on the phrase a rising tide raises all boats.
This community inspires me every single day as they grow their businesses and learn from one another, they get those wins that get them closer to why they started their business in the first place.
At the heart of it all, that’s what drives any entrepreneur. The one reason they got into business in the first place. Whether that’s family, whether that’s the ability to work with certain kinds of people or projects, or whether that’s the ability to have no ceiling on their income, that is what you’ll get up in the morning for.
For me, it’s my family. I didn’t know it when I was in my teens and vowed to myself that I wouldn’t get up in the morning and dread the day because I have to go to work. But I get up each and every day because the work I do with my amazing clients helps them accomplish their goals so that I have the time freedom and flexibility to realize mine. To be at home with my wife and 2 sons and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them, hear first words, see first steps, and most of all have the freedom to do so.
WPJuicer: You are the Founder of NurtureKit, What are your responsibilities there? Could you share any interesting stories?
Jason: At NurtureKit, I help my clients create a more engaged email list through segmentation, personalization, and smart automation to make email and on-site experiences for the individual subscriber the best it can be. This results in converting more leads to customers, customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into raving fans.
I work mostly with customers on ConvertKit these days, since that is where I find a ton of online coaches, course creators, and other business owners developing their email campaigns.
Some of the interesting projects that I’ve had the privilege of working on are custom sequences that are based on the subscriber’s selection. Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books? Whether it’s been for a podcast or membership with tons of content on the inside, those projects are the most fun because my clients get responses from their customers in absolute awe. Phrases like “This is so on point! You know me so well” or “WOW! Are you in my head?”
Being able to help my clients navigate their own customer segments, build through the execution of those segments, and hear the types of reactions my own clients get from their customers, is simply the best part of the day for me.
I’ve recently launched a service that does this at a much smaller scale for ConvertKit customers than may be starting out or have only been in business for a short amount of time where they can hire me for a day.
This service allows me to dive in with you for a whole entire day and get you squared away with whatever tech is holding you back. So if you want to build a lead magnet and integrate it into your WordPress site, let me take care of that for you. If you want to have a pitch sequence head to a landing page for your membership that’s opening up and want to make sure that once someone buys they get the member onboarding and access to the content and stop getting the pitch, let’s do it.
It’s great to be able to help people get unstuck with the tech and allow them to thrive in their zone of genius.
WPJuicer: What excites you most about your industry? Where do you see it heading in the near future?
Jason: I have to laugh anytime I hear someone say that “email is dead.” Yet in the same conversation, that person will ask you for your email address for whatever they are trying to sell you.
What excites me is that the inbox is a personal space for all of us.
It’s a space that you’ve earned some trust in order to be there. You have to create an experience that is value-packed, specific, and custom to the reader. On top of that, create a great feeling when the reader gets an email from you. You want the reader to almost be waiting for your next email.
Tying that with their experience on your website is the challenging yet exciting part. We’ve come a long way from the days where someone wouldn’t even put a credit card number into a website. Now if you don’t speak the same language the person does, show them only what they are interested in, and most importantly don’t show them what they have no interest in, you won’t be successful.
I love being able to work with creative people and businesses to make unique experiences for their customers through email and on-site experiences. I only see this advancing further as the technology becomes better. There will be challenges as well from privacy and other things, but that makes it all so interesting. It makes email and how business engages their customers that much more transparent, honest, and genuine.
WPJuicer: Can you describe your dev workflows and the tools you use during your work?
Jason: I’m heavy in email automation, so that means lots of diagrams in Figma. I use the VS Code for API work as well as websites, mostly in WordPress. Lots of geeky dev tools as well to manage and deploy code.
I use Notion for all my project and client management. All-day, every day inside ConvertKit.
WPJuicer: Besides coding and projects, you have also worked on Podcasting. Can you give us some advice on making a more successful podcast?
Jason: Listen to what your audience wants to hear from you. Cater to them and it’ll grow. It takes a long while and is a bit of a grind sometimes, but for me, I know that most of my business comes from someone hearing me on a podcast (mine or someone’s I’ve been a guest on).
How you measure success from there is on you. I know I’ll never be one of the Pat Flynn’s or JLD’s of the podcasting world and that’s perfectly fine. I enjoy doing them, having conversations with amazing people, and bringing stories and experiences to my audience in interesting ways.
My podcast, Live In The Feast, is seasonal and built in a way that audience members can binge on the topic that is most important to them right now. Some say that it’s a course library in audio-only form and I love that. That’s exactly what I had wished I had when I started out so many years ago.
WPJuicer: Name five people who have inspired you the most?
Jason: My wife, Joanna, first and foremost. If it weren’t for her support, thoughts, grounding, and of course love, I know we wouldn’t be having this interview right now.
Early on in my career, it was Matt Mederios, Drew Poland. More recently it’s been, Curtis McHale and Chris Ducker.
WPJuicer: In your opinion, what are the benefits of hosting a site on a managed cloud hosting?
Jason: Managed hosting, plain and simple, allows me to stay in my zone and do what I do best. I know enough about servers and engineering to be dangerous and no one wants me mucking around. I much rather leave that up to the experts.
WPJuicer: Who should we interview next, and why?
Jason: If you’ve yet to have the pleasure of chatting with Vito Peleg from WP Feedback, he would be a great person to chat with.
WPJuicer: We have talked too much about your professional life. Let’s tell our readers about your hobbies and interests. What does Jason do other than work? (Can we have a pics)
Jason: My life is chaotic, fun, kid-friendly, and when I’m allowed to leave the house, adventurous. When I’m not at the screen, I’m usually on the floor mixing it up with my sons TJ (3) and Lucas (1). When the quiet time hits, then it’s time for my wife and me to enjoy our time together. We either solve crimes with our Hunt-A-Killer subscription, watch a movie, get to a baseball game, or have a date night.
Our holidays are filled with family and friends. Even when we had a small 2 bedroom apt in Queens, we’d squeeze 20 people into the small kitchen and living room (sorry everyone). We wouldn’t have it any other way though.
The best adventures though come from traveling. My wife and I have gone on some awesome trips to the Caribbean, Mexico, Belize, California, Honduras, and other places. Since TJ was born, we’ve not travelled far from home just yet, and especially with Lucas being born this past year we haven’t gone anywhere, so I’m excited now that they are getting older, we can pick that up again.
WPJuicer: Any other thoughts or things you wish to mention?
Jason: One of the best things about running your own business is that you can enjoy doing things such as great interviews like this. If someone has made it this far and has a need for NurtureKit, use the code “WPJUICER” at NurtureKit and you’ll get 15% off any of the services or programs.
