We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaime Slutzky. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaime below.

Jaime, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of free and paid products that are designed to help someone build a website. Most of them go at the process to serve the website owner. This is absolutely not the way I go about building a website.

The prospective customer is the most important person to serve with every single website. I start every website project by getting to know my clients’ customers, understand how they get to the website, why they bother with the website if they are connected with the service provider on social platforms and what they are needing to understand on their way to making a buying decision.

Most agencies build websites either with a template or with a templated approach which doesn’t factor in the user. I build my websites by constantly asking “what is going to compel the visitor to scroll further, click a button, fill out a form and/or take out their credit card!”

A website that doesn’t get the visitor excited is not a website that is going to take the business into the future. I believe that we can have a lot less content on our websites when the user experience is on point, which ultimately allows for faster website design and builds leading to faster ROI.

Jaime, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a website designer and technology strategist.

I obtained my degree in computer science from McGill University in Montreal in 1999. I then spend 11.5 years in the IT department at a Forture 100 company.

I left my corporate job to build websites while raising my daughters, who were 2 & 4 at the time. Fast forward to now, they are 15 & 17 (or 18 depending on if this gets published before June 27th!) My business has allowed me to find a balance between work and motherhood.

I have always had website build as a facet of my business but I’ve dabbled in a lot of other avenues of online business including email marketing, virtual summits, courses, membership sites and coaching. Towards the end of 2023 I decided that it was the right time to start to truly grow my agency. This meant that as much as I love being an all around techie, I forced myself into the “website designer” box ~ and I am really happy here.

I love to solve problems and pick up on tech/software easily. This is my life!

I would say that I’m most proud of my 5 worksheet system to get everything I need from my clients in their and their customers’ words to build out their websites. I focus on creating high converting, mobile forward websites.

I call my websites “mobile forward” rather than “mobile optimized” because I want someone to feel like they are getting the right experience for them on their mobile devices. They don’t need an optimized version of the desktop version of the site, they need a version of the site that is going to promote action within the limited attention span that they have on their mobile device.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Hands down, networking. Both online and offline networking lead to referrals.

Well, I suppose it’s actually referrals that bring me clients. The referrals come from people I’ve taken the time to get to know.

I hosted a podcast from 2018 – 2023 and I’ve maintained good relationships with a number of my guests.
I hosted four virtual summits, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022. And the experts I brought into the summits have also been some of my best referrals.

For offline, before the pandemic, I was involved with two local networking groups, one for moms and the other in the wellness space.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I became a certified personal trainer a few years after I started my website design business. I was struggling with attracting clients and my business was starting to bottom out.

So, I took my passion for fitness and learned a lot about the human body. I was certified by NASM as a personal trainer and then went on to get a part time job at a big box gym. I enjoyed training my clients but found that the same way I was struggling to get website clients, I was also struggling with “recruiting from the floor” which was their primary method for obtaining personal training clients.

When I realized that I had to hone my sales skills either for the fitness job or for my website design business, I started to learn how to really do sales. And once I got better at understanding the psychology, I became a far better website designer and found sales that much easier!

As it happens, I needed to have knee surgery and was no longer able to work at the gym, but the insight into getting good at sales through this necessary pivot allowed me to get back on track, behind the computer where I belong!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jaimeslutzky.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaimeslutzky/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaimeslutzky/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/