“Business Witch, Goddess Manager”: A Meditation on Jess Resler
The following is an excerpted transcript from The Tallahassee Clam Shack, a podcast promoting “business conversations among friends”. In this inaugural episode, ‘Jess Resler: Business Witch, Goddess Manager’, Mike sits down with a longtime friend to discuss what happens when you send an “ass pic” to a Fortune 10 client, the difference between being a creative and being an artist, why kids should swear at adults and other ways of being boldly yourself.
Let’s cold open on Jess Resler.
This is a non-visual medium so let’s start with describing Jess’s vibe. Jess has always been a boss-ass B (and I say B because this is a family program). She has a certain Je ne give a fuh, a self-possession, that serves as its own gravitational force whenever she enters a room. Those who know her remark that she’s been a bellwether for cool since way back. Even in elementary school, kids would be like “whoa, you’ve got great energy, but also like, you scare me…and I want more.” There’s a photo of Jess in third grade where she’s dressed like Madonna and I swear you would have thought a Pyramid Club-era Madonna saw that 9 year old in a mall and thought, yoink, I’m copping that look.
She’s the oldest of three sisters — shout out to Vanessa and Alexa — and while the Reslers are Jewish, from an early age Jess’s ethical framework could be defined more through the lens of feminism and veganism. And, you know, a lot of people claim the title of feminist these days, men especially, who see it as a way to inoculate themselves from potential professional harm or as a way to improve their chances of getting laid. But Jess lives it. It’s like the Supreme Court definition of pornography, you just know it when you see it.
Jess loves advancing the cause of animals as much as she loves promoting gender equity. She embraces what she would consider “Antifa-level veganism” and even today has a small harem of cats and a new pooch, Ren.
She grew up in Seattle, embraced the hip-hop scene as much as grunge, which was ascendant at the time, but couldn’t wait to get the hell out. She took advantage of her pin-up good looks and general magnetism to dance at a club called Rick’s, back when the money was good, and made what she needed to pay her way to NY at age 18 after a couple weeks of trying to make “U-Dubbs” (UW) work.
I first met Jess Resler at a party in 2008 because her boyfriend’s brother was the longtime boyfriend of a friend from college. It became evident very quickly that Jess and her boyfriend, Vito, were two of the cooler people I had ever met, embodying many elements of that mythic “Downtown” culture that all creative people seek when they come to New York. She was building a sex toy company; Vito was a DJ. She threw events; he tagged subway cars. Many people like to project that they don’t care what other people think but with Jess, I knew I was in the presence of someone who was really gonna leave it if I didn’t take it. Jess and Vito, each had each other’s names tattooed on parts of your body that I didn’t think was possible for a tattoo artist to reach. Maybe it was illegal or required some kind of special license. If there was, it didn’t matter, because they had their 17 year old neighbor, an aspiring tattoo artist, do the work.
To really blow my mind, Vito legally changed his middle name to “Fun”. The proof was right there on his driver’s license and in the spirit of fun, showed up to his brother’s wedding in a dress, a Dennis Rodman-level act of transgression.
Being around Jess in these years felt like being the earnest narrator in a story recounting the heyday of a scene, pinnacle moments of one’s youth. As time went on, many of the artists Jess worked with succumbed to their vices but Jess leaned into her business instincts along with her innate ability to learn and evolve.
Even if you think astrology is a bunch of BS, in Jess you instantly recognize a kind of undeniable Gemini energy in her boundless creative drive. She lives at the intersection of art and commerce, where an FIT degree meets an NYU MBA. Her voice can have that fun Valley Girl roller coaster affect, which tempts you to underestimate her. Should you make that mistake, her voice narrows, takes on an edge, capable of slitting the throat of everyone in the room.
Prior to meeting Jess Resler, I thought sexy witches only existed in the Spirit Halloween store catalog. Words are spells, she’ll say and damn if she ain’t right. And you know how every successful person you know has a team, like they’ve got their legal counsel, their accountant, maybe a financial manager, a publicist, whomever. But Jess? She has a coven. She has Daganit, a sorceress; she has an animal medium and when she needs give-it-to-me-straight business advice, there’s Prof Scott Galloway.
Since I’ve known her she’s had an ever-replenishing crew of young dudes, her “Skater Boys” as she affectionately calls them, to do her bidding the way a video game boss dispatches hordes to impose her creative vision on the world. Perhaps a more fair description is to refer to this as her version of the “artist-apprentice” model because for those willing to learn, Jess is there to teach. She provides exceptional counsel. Those in her orbit will know that there is no fiercer defender than Jess, a business witch who mixes art, intelligence and alpha energy. If she is a video game character, she’s always in cheat mode.
Jess alternated between being a big sister and a younger sister, depending on what the occasion calls for. She’s most my big sister when helping me understand the mindset and occasionally the psychosis of the fairer sex and I’ve been grateful to offer older brotherly love when it comes to people who may be able to help advance her career.
But she hasn’t needed much help from me. When I met her she had just started an event company that hosted events on the Intrepid, that brought an indy rock concert into a big top circus. She recognized that New Yorkers yearn for more space but don’t always want to move to Westchester, so she built a time-share backyard in the city’s Lower East Side.
This is to say that Jess is an artist and a true artist can make art using sticks and stones or with a Fortune 500 company selling laptops and phones. She built a retail franchise at the start of the pandemic, not in an act of unfortunate timing, but recognizing that people still want to play pool but maybe want the safety of playing only with people in their early Covid pods.
Today it is inextricable to think about Jess without considering Gosh, Gosha Levochkin.
I first met Gosha in 2017 as a guy that Jess was starting to see regularly. I had heard he was rad, a rad artist and when he wasn’t painting, he ran a studio that offered art lessons for actual artists looking to make some extra cash in their downtime. I loved Gosha from the jump. He’s playful, he’s mischievous; he can embody the worldview of a rambunctious teenage boy one minute and say something startlingly wise the next, perpetually keeping you on your toes. He’s a laugh out loud mimic who invents new characters on the fly, many of whom would be inappropriate here. In a future world, you can see him illustrating and voicing a cartoon of his own design, filled with sensitive souls…and dicks. Lots of dicks. You can’t look at him without smiling.
Gosha is clearly Jess’s soulmate. Humor is at the core of being a Resler, humor that lives in the demented and dark crevices of our lives.
The best part in reflecting on Jess is knowing that she’s just getting started. She has honed her powers and is limited only in imagination. My expectation is that she’s going to summon her sorcery, experience, business acumen and global network to manifest her next big project into existence, Vegan City, an amusement park for the vegans, by the vegans.
We’ll learn about that and much more but first, let me officially welcome, Ms. Jess Resler.
Listen to the first episode of The Tallahassee Clam Shack below:
