Hello Everyone!
I'm Charles, based in East Amherst, NY.
I’m happy to be here. Community engagement has been an important part of my development as a web designer. MAK’s tutorials were instrumental in my early days learning Divi as well as local WordPress meetups. It’s great to have this focused community online to share and help each other.
I got into web design and development while living in New York City as a side gig back in 2016 as my career in AdTech was winding down after a nice run working with companies like AOL and Dotomi.
In 2023 I moved back to my hometown and decided it was finally time to be my own boss doing what I actually enjoy — web design, development, SEO, and digital marketing. That's when CRH Digital was born.
At this point, I’m expert-level in Divi (v4 and v5) since I committed to Divi early on and have used it almost exclusively since then. The past few years have been busy. I started with a few sites I built for friends, and now I've built 40+ sites for clients including about half of which are on a monthly retainer for hosting, support, and maintenance.
Right now my biggest challenge is improving my workflow for new builds and running my business in general so I can scale more efficiently.
You can find our more about me at my website or connect with me on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesharman/
Happy to swap notes on running a solo web shop including what’s worked and not worked over the years — feel free to reach out!
Best wishes to all 😀
Charles
Welcome to the community, Charles!
Going from a side gig in 2016 to building 40+ client websites and growing a recurring revenue base is an impressive journey. It sounds like you've built a solid business foundation.
I also like your focus on improving workflows and scalability, that's something many solo web professionals are constantly working on.
Looking forward to learning from your experience and insights in the community!
Welcome to the community, Charles! 👋
It’s great to have you here, and thank you for sharing your journey. You’ve built an impressive business, especially growing from a few websites for friends to more than 40 client projects, with around half of those clients on recurring retainers.
Your experience with Divi 4, Divi 5, SEO, digital marketing, AdTech, and running a solo web business will be incredibly valuable to the community. I’m sure many members will benefit from hearing what has worked for you, what hasn’t, and how you’ve built your recurring revenue.
I’m also glad my tutorials played a part in your early Divi journey. That means a lot to me.
Improving workflows and creating systems that make it easier to scale is something we’ll be exploring a lot here, so you’re definitely in the right place.
Welcome, Charles. I’m looking forward to learning from your experience and seeing you connect with everyone! 😀
Welcome to the community. We are on similar paths. I left Los Angeles and moved to a small community of Chino Valley, AZ, around 10K (but I am focusing on Prescott, population of 60K). I have 18 sites, mostly for non-profits, that I built for a very low cost. I decided to do it as a business a few months ago.
Dougie W Nice. I have a few nonprofits in my portfolio too. Happy to chat about what's worked for me in terms of my business setup, tech stack, etc. I'm OOO until the first week of August. Send me a DM anytime.
Dougie W I am redesigning for a non-profit too. Maybe I can gain some insight from you.
Great, I would love to collaborate on our experiences. I will put my phone number in a DM. Since you are not in my contacts, you will have to leave a message, and I will know it is you.
Dougie W sounds good.