When I quit my job in my early 30s, I didn’t have a perfectly mapped-out plan. I just knew I didn’t want to spend the next decade sitting in traffic, logging into systems I hated, or attending meetings where I didn’t say a word.
I wanted to build things. Digital products. Websites. Tools that felt useful and calm to use. And like many people starting out on their own, I began with a side project that slowly, quietly took over my life in the best possible way.
Ironically, that side project wasn’t born from some grand vision. It came from frustration.
The problem I didn’t know I was building toward
At the time, I was running a couple of WordPress sites. I had an eCommerce store, an email list I was trying to grow, people commenting on my articles, and readers occasionally emailing me about freelance work.
On the surface, things were fine. Orders were coming in. Subscribers were joining the list. Conversations were happening.
But everything lived in its own little silo.
If someone bought a product, they became a WordPress user on that site. If they subscribed to my newsletter, they lived in my email tool. If they commented on a post, that was somewhere else entirely. If they emailed me directly, that conversation disappeared into my inbox.
I had no single place where I could see who someone actually was or how they’d interacted with me over time.
I couldn’t tell if the person buying my product today was the same person who subscribed last year, commented on three posts, and emailed me about freelance work.
Nothing was “broken,” but nothing was connected either. And that lack of visibility made it hard to grow intentionally.
Realising there had to be a better way
I never hit a dramatic breaking point. There was no moment where everything fell apart.
Instead, there was a quiet, persistent thought that kept coming back: there has to be a better way to do this.
I was running two different eCommerce stores, selling different products, all while growing a single email list and publishing content across multiple sites. I wanted to know if I was selling to the same people across different offers. I wanted to understand who my most engaged customers actually were.
And most importantly, I wanted all of this information in one place.
Why existing CRMs didn’t work for me
Naturally, I looked at existing CRM tools.
Most of them fell into one of two camps: either they were incredibly powerful but completely overwhelming, or they were simple enough but charged far more than I was comfortable paying at that stage.
Almost all of them shared one big problem for me: they lived outside my workflow.
I didn’t want another login. Another dashboard. Another tab I had to remember to open.
I wanted a CRM that lived where I already worked: inside WordPress.
I wanted something simple. A contact list. A way to connect email conversations. A pipeline if I decided to take on freelance work. Nothing more.
When I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, I did the thing most product builders eventually do.
I built it.
Building a CRM I’d actually use
The first version of the CRM was intentionally boring.
It didn’t try to do everything. It didn’t try to compete with enterprise tools. It just solved the problems I personally had.
I built a simple contact database that lived inside my WordPress admin. I connected my email inbox. I added basic pipelines for proposals and freelance work. I made it fast and frictionless.
The key decision was this: if it felt annoying to use, I removed it.
That one rule shaped everything that came after.
How using it daily changed how I worked
Once I started using the CRM every day, something subtle but powerful happened.
Contact form submissions no longer disappeared into email threads. Landing pages fed directly into the system. I could see when someone tried a demo, signed up for the newsletter, or reached out with a question.
Instead of guessing, I had context.
Email became one of the biggest improvements. I connected my main inbox and filtered things in a way that changed how focused I felt.
Newsletters, promotions, and noise stayed out of the way. Emails from actual contacts surfaced clearly inside the CRM.
If someone mattered, I knew. If they didn’t, I wasn’t distracted.
I could even mark certain contacts as VIPs. When one of them emailed me, I got a specific notification. No inbox scanning. No missed messages.
That alone made me feel calmer and more in control of my workday.
Tags, follow-ups, and better conversations
Tagging contacts turned out to be one of the most useful features.
I could see at a glance who was outreach, who had tried a demo, who was a customer, and who was just subscribing to content.
That made follow-ups intentional instead of reactive.
If someone tried a demo and didn’t convert, I’d wait a couple of days and send a simple, human email asking how they found it and whether anything was unclear.
No automation. No scripts.
Just conversations.
Those conversations taught me more about my product than any analytics tool ever could.
The quiet impact on growth
The CRM didn’t suddenly 10x my revenue.
What it did was make everything easier.
Operations felt smoother. Decisions felt clearer. I wasn’t relying on memory or gut feeling as much. I could see what was working and what wasn’t.
That clarity freed up mental space.
And I used that space to build better products.
Knowing when it was time to go full-time
I didn’t go full-time when the product matched my old 9–5 salary.
I went full-time when it consistently covered my target monthly income.
It paid my bills. It covered my outgoings. And it gave me something more valuable than a salary: runway.
The CRM played a quiet but important role here. I could see consistent lead flow and steady revenue over time. It wasn’t blind optimism; it was evidence.
I’d also built up an emergency fund that could cover a year of zero income. That made the decision feel calm rather than reckless.
No more commuting. No more traffic. No more meetings where I didn’t speak.
Just building.
The mistake I made early on
The biggest mistake I made was assuming the CRM needed to do everything.
Invoicing. Payments. Accounting.
Eventually, I realised that a CRM’s job isn’t to replace every tool — it’s to manage relationships and context.
Now, my process is simple. When a deal is complete, I create a task to invoice the client, then I do that in my accounting software.
Clear boundaries made the system stronger, not weaker.
My advice if you’re starting a digital side project
If you’re building something today, start capturing and understanding your leads earlier than you think you need to.
You don’t need complexity. You need visibility.
Tag people. Follow up manually. Ask questions. Learn.
A CRM won’t magically grow your business — but it will give you the clarity to grow it yourself.
That clarity is what turned my side project into a full-time business.
Not overnight. Not dramatically.
But steadily, intentionally, and on my own terms.
