S5 E3: Chris Wallace

On today’s episode, we’re talking with Chris Wallace of Lift UX. Chris has been a partner of Lift UX where he has been running a high-end agency with Brad Miller for seven years. Lift UX specializes with WordPress and has realized the benefits of using Beaver Builder for smaller web projects where a lot of custom designs are not needed.

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Guest:

Chris Wallace – Lives in Texas and is the Creative Director at Lift UX running a boutique agency that also provides client services for customers. Chris shares his excitement for Beaver Builder to help you build WordPress websites easily and responsively.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • The Lift UX agency successfully launched major projects for GoDaddy, Campus Insiders, Pressed Platform, AMC Networks, and others. (5:00)
  • Boutique agency life can be successful with big brands without having many employees. (6:14)
  • It takes a long time to build a network with expert professionals and clients. (11:23)
  • Balancing time between paying the bills, product efforts and new client opportunities can be difficult but clients come first. (15:17).
  • Everyone’s business is different. What may work well for finding the value for one client may not work for everyone. (25:24)
  • The future (or flavors ) of WordPress seem to be growing in several ways. There are agencies that already have customers and are trying to expand their customer base. ex: GoDaddy.
  • There are the niche providers where there is a market that is underserved.  Beaver Builder works great for this market segment. (39:00)
  • The products will eventually merge where they will all be running WordPress, using themes and the same plugins. (40:00)
  • WordPress will be dominating. All in one packages seem to be expanding in the market for small businesses.  There will always be a need for experienced consultants. (42:47)
  • There are ways to research how businesses work together. Remote jobs was created to help partners post jobs for employees. (47:00)

Advantages of using Beaver Builder:

  • Beaver Builder is not paired with a theme and is not complex to use. (29:38)
  • Beaver Builder is very easy to use, is responsive and is great to try out on a personal project. (30:33)
  • Beaver Builder is a design tool, a wire-framing tool and also can be used for development. It really cuts down the time spent on the design phase of a project.
  • Beaver Builder is a great tool to create a product and provide service for smaller clients in a niche market like churches. This was how Faithmade was launched. (32:41)
  • Beaver Builder is great to use for the clients that have budget restraints. The tool helps you sell the concept that the web is fluid. (35:41)
  • The ease of Beaver Builder can help the “do it yourselfer” get a web site up easily and inexpensively. (43:00)

Lessons for boutique agency success:

  • It is important to build a relationship network with expert professionals and know the best person in your industry. (10:00)
  • There are numbers that need to be hit but a smaller agency can invest time that allows exploration of many opportunities. (14:15)
  • You need to build capital and invest dedicated time that finds its ebb and flow in agency work. (16:50)
  • It is tricky to balance client work with products.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Follow Chris and Lift UX
Lift UX
Chris on Twitter
Faithmade
Remote Jobs

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Comments

One response to “S5 E3: Chris Wallace”

  1. Great thoughts about offering a complete solution with hosting instead of just themes/plugins. I think we’ll be seeing more and more theme shops offering a self-hosted plan via Pressed. I think it will be natural to offer setup services as well.

    What I wonder about is multisite. Self-hosted is handy for its flexibility with plugins but it’s not totally hands-free in terms of updates, security, etc. Multisite’s limited nature provides an easier to maintain website.

    Any thoughts on there being an opportunity for a company to create a platform to make deploying a niche multisite “website builder” service easier for theme and plugin developers?

    If theme and plugin developers had things like hosting infrastructure, domain registration, account area and billing handled for them then imagine how many WordPress multisite-powered niche website builders like Faithmade would come about.

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