Meet Dan Barrett

Most agency owners stay agency owners. The work pulls you in, the clients keep coming, and the idea of building something of your own gets pushed to “someday.”

Dan didn’t wait for someday. While running NRCM Web Design, he turned a frustration he kept running into on client sites — too many plugins, too much overlap, too many moving parts — into an actual product. WP Extended was born out of solving his own problem first, which is usually the only reason a plugin is worth building in the first place.

In this profile, Dan shares the lesson that changed how he runs his agency, why planning the week ahead might be the most underrated business habit there is, and how a decade of WordPress work eventually turned into shipping software of his own.

What got you into WordPress and how long have you been using it?

I’ve been working with WordPress for well over a decade now. What first drew me to it was how accessible it was. You could take an idea, build something useful, and get it online without needing huge budgets or overly complex systems.

Over time, that turned into much more than just building websites. WordPress became the foundation for our agency, the businesses we support, and eventually our own plugin, WP Extended.

I’ve always liked that WordPress gives businesses control. For me, that’s still one of its biggest strengths.

What motivated you to start your own business, and what keeps you going when things get tough?

I started NRCM because I wanted to build something of my own and create better opportunities for myself, my family, and the people around me.

I’ve always been driven by the idea of helping businesses improve how they show up online, not just with a good-looking website, but with something that actually supports how they operate and grow.

What keeps me going when things get tough is knowing how far we’ve come. Running a business is not always easy, but seeing clients grow, seeing the team develop, and building products of our own gives me a lot of motivation to keep pushing forward.

What’s a hard lesson you learned running your business that’s changed the way you operate?

A hard lesson I learned early on was that taking on too many clients across too many different industries can create real bottlenecks later down the line.

At the time, it can feel like growth, but over time it becomes harder to manage, harder to scale, and harder to build proper systems around.

That changed the way I operate. I now think much more carefully about fit, capacity, and whether we can genuinely support a client properly long term. It’s not just about saying yes to the work. It’s about making sure the relationship is right for both sides.

What do you do to keep a healthy work/life balance as a business owner?

One thing I’ve learned as a business owner is that planning the weeks ahead properly makes a massive difference.

It keeps me clear on priorities, helps the team stay aligned, and gives clients a better understanding of what’s happening and when.

Things can still move, because that’s business, but having a proper plan makes the week feel far more controlled and helps avoid everything becoming reactive.