Galen King, Shopify Plus Growth Consultant

Latest — Sep 10, 2023

#UnderdogChallenge—my 23-year journey from soloist to agency principal and back in under 500 words

After nearly 23 years, I’m back on the tools, working directly with amazing clients—designing and building beautiful, elegant, highly functional Shopify stores—learning and growing and achieving things I’d forgotten I was capable of.

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The paradox of increasingly “powerful” ecommerce tools and realizing ultimate potential

As tools become more powerful, they also become more complex, which means less users are able to take advantage of that power. True power comes from leveraging simpler, more elegant, more pragmatic systems that combined enable outcomes that are greater than the sum of the parts.

Building strong foundations with Shopify based on the fundamental principles of ecommerce success—part 2

If you are not building your business on a foundation of core ecommerce fundamentals, you are wasting time, money, headspace, and resources. You are likely focusing on the minutiae and things that don’t matter now.

“Kablooie!”

It feels like, almost overnight, the social web has fragmented into an infinite number of pieces. Is there hope for our preciouse, time, energy, and headspace?

You have a vision—what about your objectives, strategy, plans, and goals?

Goal-setting is hard. Where do you start? What’s the difference between an objective and a goal? How do you keep track of goals or measure success or failure?

Is it time for a complexity audit?

If you’re struggling with complexity and are finding yourself endlessly tweaking and fiddling with things—but unsure what’s really going to make a difference—perhaps it’s time to assess the complexity of your business to see where you can rebase to the simplest foundations to build upon.

What is the best Shopify agency—based purely on their positioning statement?

A roundup of the positioning statements of many of the top Shopify agencies. Who would you choose to work with based on positioning alone?

Beware of GPT3’s Overconfidence: It May Not Always Be Right

No matter how wrong or off-base they are, GPT3 has a strong tendency to generate responses as though they’re the absolute authority on the subject. But, are they?

Why your Shopify BFCM sales data is probably wrong when compared to last year

25–28 November 2022 is the Friday through Monday following Thanksgiving—or BFCM. 25–28 November 2021 is Thursday through Sunday—an entire day short of BFCM!

Why is “strategy” a dirty word?

As founders, principles, and leaders, it’s hard for us to acknowledge and admit that, while we might have a strong vision for where we are going, we probably don’t have a clear plan for how we’re going to get there. And, even if we do, it’s likely incomplete or we’re too close to it.