Bonus Episode: Organic Transition from Agency to Product with Gavin Ballard

Gavin first founded Disco Labs, an agency that specializes in custom solutions for the world's biggest brands. With the sole focus of deep platform knowledge and ecosystem leadership, Disco Labs is the global partner of choice for complex projects involving Shopify. 

In addition to working with startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises, Disco Labs has released numerous open-source projects, and written detailed courses teaching others how to successfully build custom and public applications on Shopify. 

From Disco Labs came Submarine. After over a decade working with leading ecommerce merchants and solving complex challenges for them, we saw the need for better building blocks for merchants, agencies and developers when it comes to customer experiences that go beyond the transactional. 

Originally built as an internal tool to deliver those experiences, Submarine’s now a constantly-evolving platform accessible to all and tasked with making innovative commerce experiences possible for the world’s leading brands. 

Gavin is also the author of The Definitive Guide to Shopify Themes, a slew of popular Shopify frameworks like Bootstrap for Shopify and Cart.js, and numerous articles for publications like net magazine. 

He can often be seen popping up on Shopify podcasts and blogs across the internet, or in person speaking at meetups and conferences around the world.

In This Conversation We Discuss: 

• [00:49] Intro
• [01:14] Start of the journey on the Shopify ecosystem
• [02:54] Witnessing the evolution of Shopify
• [03:46] The transition from freelancing to running an agency
• [04:45] Being a niche in the early years of Shopify
• [05:55] Agencies aren’t all one size
• [07:18] The contrast between functions and specializations
• [08:24] Custom apps require specific skill sets
• [09:29] New functions & extensions on Shopify products
• [10:16] A platform built for customization requests 
• [11:29] Visible capabilities get people’s attention
• [12:01] Flexibility & accessibility for all merchants
• [12:56] The transition from an agency to a product
• [14:04] Challenges in running two different businesses
• [14:34] The defining moment that motivated the shift
• [15:09] Deciding what’s the top priority
• [16:41] Accepting suggestions from the audience
• [17:55] Seeing your hard work paying off
• [19:07] Shoehorning your business is a sign you need help
• [20:25] Submarine’s approach to different business needs
• [21:06] What Submarine has to offer
• [22:02] The cost of trying to do things on your own
• [22:39] Managing overly complex customization requests
• [23:47] Keeping it simple and applying flexibility
• [25:10] How Submarine can help your business

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Flexible commerce that connects with customers getsubmarine.com/
• Follow Gavin Ballard linkedin.com/in/gavinballard/

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