Recently, I had the chance to check in with my colleague Pablo Cruz, one of Codeable’s newer freelance WordPress developers. Coming on board from Buenos Aires, Argentina in June of 2019, Pablo’s 12-years of experience as a successful freelance developer long surpasses his time with Codeable.
If you’re not familiar already, Codeable is an outsourcing platform catering exclusively to WordPress development projects. Their mission is simple: to connect the world’s best freelance WordPress developers with clients and deliver quality without question.
Joining the creme-de-la-creme of WordPress developers on Codeable is no easy task. In fact, only 2% of WordPress developers who apply to Codeable are accepted to the platform.
Pablo made the cut.
Pablo may be new to Codeable, but his business venture Pablo Cruz Digital has been serving clients in Argentina and the US since 2014.
He attributes the continued growth of his company and personal profile to global marketplace that is now accessible through the Codeable platform. Codeable even certified Pablo’s company as an official WordPress supplier as of 2019.
In our interview below, Pablo details how his belief that “smart infrastructure can make a difference” influences his work from project to project, and the quality you can expect as a client of Codeable and Pablo Cruz Digital.
Whether it’s a made-from-scratch plugin, or a complex problem you need solved through automation, if you’re still searching for a tremendously talented WordPress developer, hire Pablo.
He and his team over at Pablo Cruz Digital are exactly who you’ve been searching for all along.
But hey, don’t just take my word for it – Hear from Pablo himself in our interview below, read reviews from his clients or browse his portfolio here.
1. For anyone who isn’t already familiar with Codeable, could you describe Codeable to them?
Codeable is a state-of-the-art platform where clients can do business with WordPress experts. Unlike other services, clients will only get in touch with real, certified professionals that were vetted and are more than great at both technical and commercial aspects.
On top of that, clients’ payments are secured into an escrow while projects are under development and there is a great customer support service that come handy when a client has doubts.
2. How has Codeable impacted your career as a freelance WordPress developer? Is working for Codeable any different than your previous jobs as a developer and if so, how?
I’ve founded Pablo Cruz Digital, which is a digital services business, back in 2014. Amongst its many milestones, this brand has been internationally certified by Codeable as a WordPress expert supplier in year 2019.
As an Argentine-based business, we only had access to local clients and USA-based clients. To me, Codeable is the door for accessing the European business opportunities and the chance to work with bigger brands.
The way I see it, every Codeable’s aspect is designed to pursue quality – great quality at communication, great quality at briefing, and of course great quality at development.
Somehow, they changed the way freelancing marketplaces work. They were able to onboard experts and at the same time, they were also able to rethink the idea of competition to form a real community of WordPress services suppliers.
Due to the fact the there is sense of community amongst experts, it feels amazing to have the chance to connect to these people and being able to learn how others work, to ask for opinions and also to have nice conversations about different cultures.
As a quality-pursuer professional, I would say Codeable is the opportunity to invest in your own business and take it to the next level.
“Con sede en Argentina, Pablo Cruz Digital es una agencia de servicios de Desarrollo Web bilingüe (español e inglés), enfocada principalmente en WordPress. Fundada en 2014 y dirigida por Pablo Cruz, profesional con más de 12 años de experiencia en Desarrollo Web, es una marca vetada como experta en WordPress por Codeable.”
3. Do you have a favorite memory, or favorite client, from Codeable? If so, could you tell us more about what set that experience apart from all the rest.
I’ve got more than one favorite memory, but I’ve recently had the opportunity of getting involved into a really complex project that was about to sync an external catalog with a WordPress/WooCommerce website. Due to the fact there was huge amount of data to deal with, we had to get creative and implemented radical solutions to get the most out of the WordPress performance. To sum up, the project went great and the level of automation achieved marked a breakthrough in our history of success.
4. What are your favorite types of projects to work on via Codeable? If you could pick your perfect project, what (or who) would it be?
Our business focuses on two pillars: WordPress Themes and Heavy-data processing WordPress Plugins. I strongly believe in investing in my own infrastructure.
It is my belief a smart infrastructure can make a difference. If you are like me, you started a business from scratch; meaning you had to figure things out on a daily basis. I discovered that an efficient and flexible workflow and a certain level of automation can be the boost your business needs. For that reason, we develop our own tools that enable us to provide advanced features to projects that are not necessarily overdeveloped.
For example, when it comes to WordPress Themes projects, we are not limited to choose between Premium Themes and tailored-made Themes. We have developed a tool that enables the client to choose an already designed mockup and transform it into a fully- integrated WordPress Theme with a resulting performance of a custom-made project.
We also love creating WordPress plugins; we have over 7 years of experience developing plugins of any kind. We mostly focus on tailor-made plugins that need to process a huge amount of data; for example, a system that consumes a third-party API service, retrieves and process the data and transform it into WordPress content.
5. For anyone who is considering joining Codeable, what advice would you have to share with them to convince them to join?
Get ready to bring quality to the next level! If you are really interested in working great and deliver great experiences to clients, get ready to meet the Codeable way!
6. Some people think we’re robots, but developers are human too… When you’re not writing code for your clients, what do you like to do with your free time?
As an automation lover, having free time to do others things is essential. When I’m not working, I love spending time with my girl and dogs, having long walks and to connect to the spiritual aspects of life. I try to experience life as a whole.
7. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us about your time on Codeable so far?
No matter how nerdy or technical your profile is, invest time into customer support skills. Learning how to relate to clients is essential to run a business, even more if you are a freelancer.
In terms of strategy, I recommend focusing on a small set of technologies and get the most out of them. Trying to reach every cutting-edge technology that is released can make you lose your path.
8. What value does your business add to your clients?
I like to think of ourselves as the business that “can offer that alternative, smarter proposal.” The WordPress ecosystem has two major offers: Premium (or freemium) and Custom Themes / Plugins. Proposals will bounce between these two choices to meet client’s budget, due date and desired features. It’ll either sacrifice performance, design or features, unless of course, there isn’t budget limitations which almost never happens.
We understand this situation because the same rules apply to the internal development process. So we developed a new workflow and a set of libraries that help us solve the performance issues and can guarantee the non overlapping of development’s resources/stages. This also means you can present alternative proposals, such as having a custom WordPress project by using a premium HTML mockup instead of a premium WordPress Theme. This enables us to focus on features without loosing control over design aspects while keeping performance at its best score.
Clients that have struggled with premium themes or plugins love this strategy because they already know the implications of having to choose between two radically different paths, and we offer an intermediate way of solving the project’s requirements.
On the other hand, we also try to educate new clients about these issues and we inform about the benefits of working this way.