Jason Resnick (aka @rezzz) shares how he went from burnt out jack-of-all-trades to in-demand specialist.
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Transcript
Jonathan Stark
Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly, I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I'm joined by guest Jason Resnick. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Resnick
Thanks for having me Jonathan.
Jonathan Stark
Can you tell folks who haven't heard of you before who you are and what you do?
Jason Resnick
Sure, as I said my name's Jason Resnick, Rezzz online as most people know who I am there. Yeah, I'm a web developer, I've been since the late 90's so showing my age a little bit. And yeah, and I've worked the full gamut from Fortune 50 companies to small agencies, largee agencies, consulting firms. And then I struck out on my own doing my own thing twice, the second time is in 2010 and I've been doing that full time every since.
Jonathan Stark
Excellent. So, the main reason, the impetus of this phone call is that ... I don't want to air too much dirty laundry but I was considering a platform migration from Drip to Convert Kit. So, anyone lisetening to this show I'm sure knows I sent out daily emails from a very heavy user of email automation, email marketing software, and it's one of my daily tools. So, small things really matter to me because it really adds up over time if there's small things that are annoying or not the way I'd like 'em or whatever the case may be.
Jonathan Stark
So, I was kind of, to be honest I was kind of ranting about this in a slack room that we're both in and as many times as we've talked in the past you were not pigeon holed in my mind as an email marketing platform guru the way that you are now. So, it was like we started talking and I was like, "Wow, Jason's got amazing answers to these questions. What's going on here?" So, tell me a little bit about ... And then, I came to realize oh this is your deal. So, could you tell people a little bit about your, I don't know I'll use the wrong word but sort of convert kit trusted partner or whatever it is and I think you're also a Drip one and that whole.
Jason Resnick
Yes.
Jonathan Stark
Talk a little bit about how that piece of it happened, the sort of partner thing.
Jason Resnick
Yeah. So, like I said I am a web developer. I focused ever since I started on my own I focused with e-commerce companies whether they were selling digital, physical products, membership websites, subscriptions, even non profits, basically anybody that was taking some sort of a transaction online. And as that grew and I really started to work, sort of fall into a specialty there where I was helping them decrease the time from the first interaction to their first purchase as well as creating repeat buyers and rating fans out of the customers. That was around I guess 2013, 2014 ish, I really started to look into email marketing. Because that was kind of, I mean obviously at that point in time it was out there, it was doing it, but it wasn't doing it at the level that it is now. But I was a web developer so when Drip came along I was taking a look at their API and to be able to do some of the things that Drip was able to do through the API meaning leveraging that subscriber data on the website making the experience on the website a little bit more personal based around whether you opened up the last email or not and these kind of things. And I mean you can do down the rabbit hole of personalization there but that was the genesis of where I am today because what I was doing with my clients as far as the development end of it people wanted more of the other stuff. They wanted the on site personalization. They wanted the beahavioral marketing that I was implementing more so than the custom development work that I was doing. 'Cause at the time and I still do this to this day is I sort of put that final 20% into their website. So, out of the box they install orld wcommerce or whatever. They get 80% of the way there, they see that it's working and getting traction and now they want to put the rest of their business into it whether that's inventory control or anything like that. So, I ...
Jonathan Stark
Can you sort of drill into that a little bit more? I want to make sure it's clear. So, when you say, "Put 80% into it", and you mentioned WooCommerce. I'm not a 100% sure I'm following so.
Jason Resnick
Sure. Yeah. So, I focus in on WooCommerce based customers and a lot of times the companies would install world commerce and find out that it was working for them just out of the box. They would be able to sell products, they would be able to do these things but then other areas of the business whether it was a brick and mortar business like I had one customer that was an ice cream shop that only could deliver to local areas because otherwise it would melt or whatever it is right?
Jonathan Stark
Yeah.
Jason Resnick
So, things like that right?
Jonathan Stark
So, that's what you meant when you said put the rest of the business into it?
Jason Resnick
Right.
Jonathan Stark
Okay I've gotcha.
Jason Resnick
So, but then I noticed a trend towards the behavioral marketing stuff, the email marketing, and automation, and things. And I decided that I could essentially do a lot of that stuff with Java Script code. I didn't need to be in the WooCommerce space, or Magento space, or any of that kind of stuff. So, I just gave it a shot and I basically said, "Okay I'll give this six months. I'm going to essentially slice that part of the business out and offer that as a service." And at that time it was just Drip and I wound up getting a couple of Shopify customers, a couple of Magento customers, and it worked out well. It was nice and easy for me to be able to implement that stuff over and over again. It was a platform that was working well.
Jason Resnick
Support was great too in the growing API there and all that other stuff. So, I was like, "Okay this is great". When they offered the consulting, I think they called it a certified consultant program or something like that, they knew who I was. 'Cause just in and around the community around Twitter and things like that I would jump into these conversations where Drip was mentioned and not to totally get into the weeds over there but I would just basically set up Zapya recipe to look for those mentions and then ping me in my own private Slack. So, I kind of jumped ahead of drip a lot of times in the conversations and I was just offer suggestions, or answers, or things like that because I was well versed in the platform. So ...
Jonathan Stark
Now is that ... Sorry to interrupt. Is that where these clients came from because they saw you and you put them ...
Jason Resnick
A lot of times.
Jonathan Stark
Okay.
Jason Resnick
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times.
Jonathan Stark
So, basically you being helpful online in public brought you to the attention of Drip but also a bunch of clients who were evidently wrestling with these problems and then you just basically act like third party support in a way.
Jason Resnick
Exactly, exactly right.
Jonathan Stark
Awesome.
Jason Resnick
And they said, "Well we're opening up this consultancy platform, or certification program, or whatever you want to call it", which was really just a [inaudible] had to use Drip in the best way that they wanted you to use it. And so, I dove in. I was in the first co hort of those. I don't really think they have two of them. I'm not really sure h...