IAM2613 – Entrepreneur Helps Developers and Designers Build Recurring Revenue

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Jason Resnick Teaser 00:00
Helping, coaching, mentoring, selling digital products, running a community to help other feasters, as I call them, we're living in the feast, and helping them in any sort of way to essentially learn what I've learned and what I'm doing today.

Intro 00:19
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?
If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:46
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jason Resnick of rezzz.com. Jason, it's awesome having you on the show.

Jason Resnick 00:55
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 00:59
No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Jason so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And Jason helps developers and designers discover their niche, plan out, and market themselves to build recurring revenue so that they can live the life that they want and ultimately reach the goals of why they started their businesses in the first place.

He has run his own web development business since 2010, helping establish online businesses, increase sales through optimization, conversion, and behavioral strategy. He does this through an onsite personalization, email and marketing campaigns to learn more about the potential and existing customers to decrease the time to first purchase and increase repeat purchases.

Jason, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Jason Resnick 01:43
Absolutely. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 01:45
So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Jason Resnick 01:51
Yeah, I mean, what started my business was just really, I mean, the compass of the whole thing is so that I have time freedom. I want to be able to, you know, I built my business so that I could see my kids' first steps and hear their first words and be home and go to those sort of school events, although My two sons are two and a half and two months old. So, they're not in school just yet.

Gresham Harkless 02:15
You're ahead of the game.

Jason Resnick 02:15
Yeah. So, for me, that's the compass of why I do what I do. And for me, it came really early on that I wanted to do it.

I didn't come, my parents weren't entrepreneurs. But, you know, really, really young, I knew that I just wanted, as an adult, to be in control of my own time and not have to ask for permission because it was awesome weather outside on a Tuesday afternoon to go spend time outside.

For me, that's why I started the business that I have today. being a developer, I mean, that was the first step in me creating the business, running my own development firm, even though that I'm a solo business owner, but helping my clients and helping them grow their businesses.

And then when my first son was born, That's when I realized I had a bigger purpose, if you will, to help other developers and other designers reach that goal. Because immediately when he was born, my dreams were realized. I had built that business. I had built the business around the life that I wanted to live.

At that point in time, I was like, okay, how do I do this? How do I do this in a way where I can help other people realize their dreams? Because we didn't start a business ultimately to have more bosses or work more or anything of that nature.

So that's what I've been doing for the past 12 to 18 months, really helping coaching mentoring, selling digital products, running a community to help other feasters, as I call them.

We're living in the feast. Helping them in any sort of way to essentially learn what I've learned and what I'm doing today.

Gresham Harkless 04:12
Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that and appreciate even more that, you know, kind of highlights the fact that, you know, we as people, a lot of times because of circumstances, whether it be, you know, having, you know, a son or daughter or, you know, just something happens in life that sometimes our goals and our aspirations and what we're looking for changes.

So I appreciate you for being able to do it for yourself, but we appreciate you even more for like helping so many other people be able to tap into that and build that their life around, you know, what their goals and aspirations are.

Jason Resnick 04:40
No, thank you. I appreciate that. For me, I try to help in a way where I wish I had back in 2010, there was somebody there. Nowadays, there's so much going on.

There's so much information out there that people can consume. There's so many other great people doing similar work that I am, but ultimately, who we attract is who resonates with us and our vibe. I have a business coach, Chris Ducker, and he says, your vibe attracts your tribe. Having that out there and me who I am.

I have a podcast, two podcasts in fact, but those listeners often will convert into coaching clients or anything of that nature because they hear me, right? Like yourself. I mean, we're talking to each other here, but there's the listener also like the fly on the wall and they hear how we talk and what we think about things and our perspectives and our stories, ultimately, and that's what's going to resonate with whoever it is that you can help.

And so, you know, I always encourage everybody. Whether you're an introvert like myself, which I say, I have introverted tendencies, but just put yourself into whatever you're doing and you'll find that it's gonna reap the benefits even more. You're gonna enjoy the people that you work with. You're not gonna feel like you're, oh, I'm dreading the day because I have to work on this.

If you can inject that personality a little bit more into it, you'll find that you'll appreciate the work even more.

Gresham Harkless 06:23
Nice. Yeah, I definitely appreciate that perspective and that your vibe attracts your tribe even more because a lot of times you don't know whether you should be yourself or not, but I feel like the answer, just like you said, is always to be yourself and to be as much of yourself as you can because the people that genuinely want to be around you and want to buy your services and products will be attracted to you just like, you know, bees and honey.

So I wanted to hear a little bit more.
I know you touched on a little bit. Can you tell us, you know, what you're doing to kind of support the clients, how you're doing the coaching and consulting, and then what you feel is kind of like your secret sauce and what makes you unique?

Jason Resnick 06:57
Yeah, that's a big question and a lot of questions in that one. But yeah, I mean, for me, like I said earlier, the development services side of my business is the big arm, right? And so I've been doing that since 2010. I love my clients, they're recurring clients for the most part.

Yes, I do one-off projects for folks, but say 85% of the revenue from the services comes from predictable and recurring income. And I will always do that. It's what I enjoy the most. I have some clients that have been with me for four or five years.

And so, you know, I'm always going to be doing that stuff because the world in which we live in changes so fast. So what worked for me last year, three years ago, definitely five years ago, doesn't work in today's market.

And so, you know, When I turn that back on to helping other developers and designers, they see that I'm walking the walk, that I'm doing what I'm saying I'm doing. I share with them the quote-unquote failures or the learning experiences, as I call them.

And I want to be able to share that with people. Like, hey, look, I tried this. It's a new spin on an old strategy. Here, and here's a template.

And this is what I use. And here's the results. I'd love to share that with you. And that's the premise of really what my coaching and some of the community, Feast community, is all about.

It's really just helping people figure it out in a way that is a smoother road than where I had to do it. And so that for me has always, I don't know, I shouldn't say always, but that for me fuels my fire more so than anything else at this point in time. What makes me stand out and unique is that I am walking the walk. I would come out and say that I'm never going to not do the services work because I enjoy that side.

People always say, how do you do both things? They're so different. The marketing of one is not the same as the marketing of the other. You're only one person.

How do you manage all of that? For me, it's a fine balance. It's a lot of time management. planning things out and I Just that's just me.

Like I enjoy doing what I do. Yes, I you know, I have As I said, I have a podcast. Well, I don't like audio editing So I outsource that right and that's my only outsource thing. I do all the development for my clients I do all the coaching one-on-one.

I do all the marketing and all the rest of it but it's for me, I feel like if I'm not doing it and And yes, there's that mindset of scale and hiring and all the rest of it. But for me, that's not my mindset.

And if I know what levers I'm pulling and working, that's ultimately going to get me to where I want to be. Because as I said earlier, my compass is that time freedom and spending time with my family and things of that nature.

And so I only need a handful of clients on the services side, right? And so, I don't need 100 people coming in. I don't need that constant marketing. I don't need that constant paid, which I've never actually ran a paid ad to my services ever.

I don't need that stuff. So, I'm just acutely aware of what I need and how I make my decisions to make sure that it aligns with my ultimate why.

Gresham Harkless 10:37
Yeah, I definitely appreciate that because I think a lot of times it's so noisy that you can end up like you kind of touched on chasing a rabbit that you didn't even want to chase.

But being able to kind of stay true to your why, stay true to exactly what you want to do is definitely something that's huge. So I appreciate you for doing that. And then again, you know, helping people to be able to kind of tap into that.

And I think too, You know, because you're coaching, because you're consulting, a lot of times people will start a coaching consulting practice after they've worked in a business and they do it to get away from that.

But like you mentioned, there's so many changes that happen that you really need to have more than kind of a toe dipped in to kind of understand like where the current is going, where the current is going to go. So I appreciate you for being able to kind of tap into both of those. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jason Resnick 11:34
I, and I've been doing this for a long, long time. It's my Sunday morning review. And it's, there's not an app for it. There's not a, you know, it's just my habit.

And it's what I do is I grab my cup of coffee in the morning and I sit down and they do my weekly review.

Gresham Harkless 11:49
Right. I think that's a, that's a huge thing just because a lot of times, even when we think we're, you know, cutting things off and it's the end of the day, a lot of times we hold on to things, but I find, and I don't know if you find the exact same thing when you're able to write it out or even plan it out, or I'm going to deal with that there, time block this in this place, whatever. it gets it out of your head, gets it off your shoulders, and it makes you being able to kind of be more present and be able to kind of tackle whatever is happening at that current time.

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and I know you referenced these as well, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self? I would say the

Jason Resnick 12:27
words of wisdom, and there's really two things. One, it's charge what you're worth and don't apologize for it. The second is, is effort matters more than anything else.

Gresham Harkless 12:40
Absolutely. I love both of those nuggets. And I think especially, you know, related to effort, I always used to say, control what you can control. And if you can control your effort, you can control that.

You can't control, oh, the invoicing system doesn't work or whatever, those technological things that happen often. So sometimes you just have to be able to control those things. And I think that at the end of the day, it also brings a lot of peace because you know that you did everything that you could do and those other things happen, but you did all that you could do. So I think that also brings some peace.

And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Jason, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jason Resnick 13:16
Serving first, right? Serving your customers or clients, serving your family and who is you're essentially responsible for, whether it's your family, whether it's your employees, whether it's, you know, friends.

Gresham Harkless 13:30
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule to give us so much value and information. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And then, of course, how best they can get a hold of you.

Jason Resnick 13:45
Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, if as far as you know, if you're trying to figure out your way, right, especially like I know myself, I ran into a problem where I tried to run a business myself twice, right? And I hit the same wall twice.

And I was like, maybe this just isn't for me. And I was like thinking of giving up. And, you know, I even told my then-fiancé at the time that I'm just gonna go back and get a full-time job. Maybe this just isn't for me.

And so, you know, she kinda gave me the kick in the butt that I needed and showed me the support and knew that that's not what I wanted and that's not what, we wanted as a family and such.

And I was surprised by that, but what happened from that was this self-reflection on my business. And it was really just taking a look and taking stock in who I was working with, types of projects that I was working on, figuring out what I liked and didn't like, and then figuring out some common elements. amongst all of those things.

And what came out of that, and this was a really long self-reflection, it was probably over the course of a week, about 20 hours, where out of the Out of that, I had my ideal client and the red flags list.

Matter of speaking, I was specializing my business. That's why you mentioned earlier on that I helped establish online businesses. Establish is a keyword there.

Jason Resnick 15:17
I don't work with people that have no online presence. I can't help them in a way that I can help if you already do.

Gresham Harkless 15:24
Nice, nice, nice. And for people that want to follow up with you, Jason, what's the best way for them to do that? And then also, you know, subscribe to your podcast and hear all the awesome things you're doing.

Jason Resnick 15:34
Yeah, you can find me at rezzz.com. That's with three Z's. There you can opt in to my free email course, which is helps. It's five five-email course that helps you get the best kind of clients that you want.

And my two podcasts are there. That's Live in the Feast and Ask Res are the two podcasts and the two different formats. They're kind of like on either end of your spectrum. One's a real short, about five minutes, and the other one's an interview-style show, which is about 40 minutes or so.

Jason Resnick 16:06
And if you want to reach out on Twitter, that's usually my social media platform of choice. I'm res there as well with three Zs.

Gresham Harkless 16:15
Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll have those links in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you. But again, I truly appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Jason Resnick 16:23
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it.

Outro 16:25
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at ceohacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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