Member Spotlight: Justin Sainton

Zao started with an 18-year-old Justin Sainton printing grainy flyers on his home printer and knocking on doors to land his first few jobs. Now his version of fun is juggling five kids and annoying his wife with Instagram quiz filters. He’s come a long way.

With Zao now going 18 years strong, Justin enjoys continuing to work with his team at Zao to build intuitive, robust solutions for world-class companies using WordPress every day.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

Having worked with WordPress for almost its entire existence, the joy of being able to transform it into the right tool for the right job is constant. Whether it’s the backend to a headless SPA, a React Native app, a multi-million dollar eCommerce store, or even a blog (crazy, right?) – it’s as much fun to work with as it has ever been. And it just keeps getting better.

Combined with the open-source ethos that has provided a now decades-long compelling vision for software engineers across the globe and the community that has coalesced around it – it’s just incredible. I’m so thankful for the core project, the community and the vision for the future that WordPress represents.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

There’s nowhere else on the planet that provides as much value to developers, WordPress community members, agency owners – every box that I “check”, I receive a ton of value from in Post Status. Cory and the team around him have continued to build the premier “place” for WordPress people to gather. Just the DMs in Slack alone have provided 10,000% more value to my professional and personal life than I’ve ever invested in Post Status.

But that’s just the “value” that I get from Post Status. What I love about Post Status? The people. I love getting to know more about other people, the cool work they’re doing, the life transitions that happen, being able to provide value in different conversations where my perspective may be helpful and learning SO much from so many every day. I’m obsessed with being an encourager, so intentionally finding opportunities to encourage someone in Post Status is something I love about it!

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

Just keep going.

Starting your business, or side project, or core contribution journey – whatever it may be – just start, and then don’t stop. Just don’t give up, keep going, and you’ll be amazed at how excellence, compounded over time, produces results in your life that you might not be able to imagine today.