Aaron Bowie, Founder of We Are AG, Shares His Inspiring Story of Going From a Hardware Engineer to an Entrepreneur

Aaron Bowie, Founder of We Are AG, Shares His Inspiring Story of Going From a Hardware Engineer to an Entrepreneur

Reading Time: 7 minutes

The WordPress community is no short of inspiring people who achieved success by creating amazing things with WordPress. Today, we have one such personality who didn’t let his humble beginnings come in his way of achieving his dream.

Aaron Bowie, founder of We are AG is with us today for an exclusive interview so without further ado, let’s hear it from the man himself.

Cloudways: Hi Aaron, Thank you for taking out some time for this interview with Cloudways. When and how did you start your career with WordPress? Is there an interesting story behind this?

Aaron: Back in 2005 I set up and ran a PC review website on WordPress (this was the first time I used WordPress). With some basic HTML/CSS knowledge I started to mess around with WP and I was instantly hooked ;).

I came from a hardware background with the review website and started my web career working for a small PC repair shop/web design firm. On slow days in the shop with repairs, I would shadow the main dev (a PHP developer). Afterhours we would think of projects and build them together (these were all non-WP projects). I then made the transition over to junior frontend dev. Over time I picked up more and started to get curious to play more with WordPress.

Over the course of a few years, I worked for a number of agencies both large and small.

“We are AG” started because I wanted the freedom and flexibility of freelancing, and just like many other freelance businesses, we started doing custom theme builds. After the first year of business, I made the pivot to mainly focus on WooCommerce (back then there were not many freelancers focused purely on Woo). In late 2015 I had built my first premium plugin which I also sold on “We are AG”. 2018 was the year I decided to go full-time as a plugin developer.

Cloudways: You currently work at We are AG. What are your responsibilities there? Could you share any interesting stories?

Aaron: Ahh the day in the life of a plugin business owner? I have multiple roles that include development, support and looking after my team. I have been super lucky because in the last 6 months or so we have grown from just me to having June becoming part of the support team, right now we are training up another person to help June with support and will continue to grow our numbers to help our customers and roll out new updates.

Right now 80% of my time is spent on dev work. I have been working on a ton of new features and working with beta testers to get these features ready for the big push out to the users.

Cloudways: What are your views about the future of online payments? 

Aaron: With the introduction of both PSD2 & SCA, I think this is a step in the right direction with regards to payment security and I am excited to see this improved in the future.

I was, however, saddened to see the delay in the PSD2 & SCA rollout as providers like myself had spent a fair bit of time getting plugins ready and tested for the deadline.

What is PSD2? 

PSD2 is the second Payment Services Directive, designed by the European Union. It is aimed at revolutionizing the payment industry which will affect everything from the way we pay online and what information we see when making a payment.

What is SCA?

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is a requirement of PSD2*, which asks businesses to use at least two authentication elements to verify electronic payments. This is aimed at reducing fraud and making online payments more secure for users. 

“We are AG” specialises in niche gateway providers. While most people start with the likes of PayPal or Stripe, many PayPal alternatives charge lower fees than PayPal’s 2.9 percent plus £0.30. PayPal has also been known to freeze accounts for up to six months without prior warning. I have seen this happen with some of my friends in the industry and trust me, it is not the best situation to be in.

It’s tempting to choose a cheaper solution, but that’s not always the ideal choice. Ultimately, a low-cost solution can drive customers away through an unpleasant checkout experience. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. What will keep them coming back again and again? What will make them trust your website/shop?

Growing a business is exciting. Seeing sales orders coming in motivates you to keep going even when things get tough. Choose the payment gateway that will work best with your business. Take time to do the research and read the reviews. Ask other online business owners what gateway they’ve used. Consider the costs involved and even the scalability for when your business grows.

Cloudways: The WordPress repository contains thousands of plugins. Can you specify some of the plugins you use more often?

Aaron: We use a number of plugins when helping customers which includes Updraft backups and Coming Soon Page by SeedProd. I have been using both of these plugins for a long time and they help us to debug any issues customers may have in a safe way.

I can not stress enough about the importance of having multiple backup systems in place. Server backups, plugin backups to a local machine or offsite (Somewhere like Dropbox or Google Drive).

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Cloudways: Can you describe your dev workflows and the tools you use during your work?

Aaron: I use both a Windows PC and Laptop (when I am away). The setups are the same for both which means I can pick up from where I left off on both machines.

I have been using Visual Studio Code for a few years now. Before this, I used both Atom and Brackets for a while but I kept getting itchy feet and wanting to swap all the time. I seemed to get on with VS much better and I haven’t thought about changing in quite some time. I use VS with a number of extensions installed.

I use Local by Flywheel to spin up local WordPress installs which allows me to test for different environments. I use Git and Github for versioning.

Finally, the todo list for the plugins is on a private Trello board.

Cloudways: You live in Aberdeen, United Kingdom. What are some local WooCommerce meetups you like? Would you like to mention a WooCommerce developer to be interviewed next?

Aaron: I have only been in Aberdeen for just over a year, sadly there are no meetups here in the city but I have been a regular at the WordPress meetup in Dundee and I also attended WordCamp Glasgow at the start of the year. Before I moved to Aberdeen I was local(ish) to London so I would attend the WooCommerce meetups there.

The best bit of WordPress is the community around it. WordPress meetups are good because you can see people face to face. However, I think I get more out of the Slack communities that I am a part of. The important ones to me are Freemius Dev and WP&UP.

In the Freemius Dev slack channel, we are all developers using the platform to sell our products. We not only talk about Freemius but also help each other with other issues and questions around selling WP products. I have a few colleagues here who check in with each other every now and then, sharing details about sale numbers and also sharing tips to push sales.

WP&UP has become more popular in recent times but I have been part of the Slack community now for a little over a year, maybe two years. Here I am part of a small group of people who “meet up” once a fortnight to talk and help each other (much like a mastermind group). Being part of this group has helped me push “We are AG” to what it is now.

Who I would like to mention to be interviewed next? Someone I look up to and always ask for advice on things is James Kemp (Iconic WP)

Cloudways: In your opinion, what are the benefits of hosting a site on a managed cloud hosting?

Aaron: For me, the benefits of not having to worry about security or monitoring the server are a plus and it helps me get on with what I need to do. So being proactive on the detection of vulnerabilities and irregularities to ensure nothing impacts the productivity of your website is a huge plus in my book. Also, knowing that the support is always there if and when I need it also adds to my peace of mind.

Cloudways: What are your activities outside of the work? What are your hobbies? 

Aaron: I am down at the gym three times a week. Working from home has its benefits but there is a downside to not needing to commute to work so to keep myself active I go to the gym.

At the weekends I am usually out on the motorbike in the Scottish Highlands exploring and getting lost (most often). Being so close to the Highlands is what led me to move to Scotland. For me, the countryside is beautiful up here.

motorbike

Ok, maybe not so much when it is raining, haha.

motorbike Tour

Below is one of my favourite spots to stop and eat a packed lunch. There is no one around for miles.

favourite spots

Cloudways: Finally, here’s your chance to freestyle. Write anything you think could be interesting or useful to our readers.

Aaron: My main tips are to get in the habit of using a staging website. This is the safest option when working on a website because you can update plugins and test to make sure everything is working as it should. It’s important to be on top of updates and with a staging site in place, you could set a monthly task to run through the updates and then push the updates to take them live.

Cloudways: Can you please share the images of your workstation?

Aaron: Here are two pictures of my setup. I use a sit/stand desk to split up the day a little. Sitting for hours is really not good for you.

stand desk

I recently upgraded to a 49-inch screen. Before I was working on three 24 inch screens for almost five years. I can honestly say my workflow has improved with this upgrade.

upgraded to a 49-inch screen

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Aaron Bowie, Founder of We Are AG, Shares His Inspiring Story of Going From a Hardware Engineer to an Entrepreneur 1

Saud Razzak

Saud is the WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways – A Managed WooCommerce Hosting Platform. Saud is responsible for creating buzz, spread knowledge, and educate the people about WordPress in the Community around the globe. In his free time, he likes to play cricket and learn new things on the Internet. You can email him at [email protected]

Keep reading the article at The Official Cloudways Blog. The article was originally written by Saud Razzak on 2020-03-18 10:10:11.

The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.

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