Thank you for your perspective. I very much agree with you - you're the type of designer a small business would really appreciate. The point I was trying to make in the article was alluding to many online bootcamps churning out UX designers that didn't have the design foundation that design generalists usually do. I often spot sloppy visual design that needs to be fixed by a visual designer. Small businesses would need a designer who is very strong in visual design but also understands user experience.

Completely agree with what you said about the Shopify template example - the user experience has been baked in to the template itself. I thought of hiring a UX designer as more of a luxury for small businesses because normally, business owners would have to pay much more than a couple of hundred bucks if they hire someone to do the UX instead of "buying off the shelves" the first time around -aka the template.