Meet John Serbell

John Serbell didn’t exactly take the traditional route into web design.

Film degree in 2008 (brutal timing). Two years in AmeriCorps traveling the country in a 15-passenger van doing disaster relief and wildfire training. Then a financial services job that he knew almost immediately wasn’t for him. Somewhere in there, he and his wife sold everything they owned, built out a campervan, and launched a site that went on to rank #1 for “van life” for years.

In other words… he’s been in the trenches.

What I love about John’s story is that he didn’t start as a designer trying to sell design. He learned SEO because he needed traffic. He learned development because he needed things to work. He learned design because the site had to convert. That “build it to serve a purpose” mindset is baked into Blue Mesa Creative.

In this interview, John talks about why he’s really a builder at heart, how he’s leaning into solving complex WordPress messes, and what it looks like to run a business that lets him take the afternoon off to play dinosaurs with his kids.

If you believe websites should actually do something (not just look nice) you’ll appreciate John’s perspective.

What kind of work did you do before your current business and what did you bring with you into this career?

I’ve gone through a bit of a journey to get to this business. I graduated from college in 2008 with a film degree, which was a terrible year to graduate.

In search of meaning and adventure, I joined a national service organization called AmeriCorps NCCC in 2010. I spent the next two years traveling around the US in a 15-passenger van with teams of other 18–24 year olds, responding to disasters, building houses, working with nonprofits, and even received wildland firefighter training. I also met my wife.

After getting out of AmeriCorps, I moved to my wife’s hometown of St. Louis and fell into a job at a large financial services firm. From the first moment of working in an office I knew I wanted out. My goal was to build up location-independent income so my wife and I could travel more before settling down.

I dove into the whole “make money online” world, learned about SEO and affiliate marketing, and took a community college class in HTML/CSS. In 2016 I signed up for an internship with Spencer Hawes’ team at Niche Pursuits, and they gave me structured guidance starting my first website.

Around the same time, my wife and I decided to sell everything we owned, quit our jobs, and travel around North America in a campervan with our dog. We documented the build on a new website, gnomadhome.com. I didn’t see much search volume and assumed it would just be a fun side project, but I did all the “SEO stuff” anyway. It turned into a major resource for people converting vans into campers and eventually ranked #1 for “van life” for several years.

Over time it became more difficult and expensive to keep up with SEO-driven content websites, and the business model started making less sense for us. I realized that my favorite part of the business was actually working on the websites, which led us to pivot to building websites for other businesses in early 2024.
I think what these experiences have allowed me to bring to Blue Mesa Creative is an “in the trenches” perspective on websites. I didn’t originally come into this business as a designer, or even a developer. I learned both skills as needed in order to help my websites achieve business goals. Now I am a designer who can code (or a developer who can design), but I keep both in service of what the website is actually supposed to do.

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

I got into Wordpress initially around 2014 as I was looking to build out my own affiliate marketing websites.

Back then I was heavily reliant on pre-made themes and the relatively weak page builders that existed at the time. I built my first real website with Thrive Content Builder, and eventually switched to Beaver Builder. I also built out some early Elementor sites, and used Divi back when it was backend only.

In 2019 I switched all of our websites over to the block editor using a combination of GeneratePress and Kadence Theme/Kadence Blocks (and eventually GenerateBlocks). Our sites were heavily blog-driven, and I didn’t want to have two separate systems for editing/styling pages and blog posts. 

I’ve since gone hard into building GenerateBlocks sites. The product itself has gotten more and more powerful, and it just clicks with my brain.

What part of the website creation process is your favorite to work on and why?

I consider myself to be a creative so I had assumed that I would like the design process the most, but it turns out I really love the development side. I just find it fun to figure out how to implement a design or function into a working website. It’s a melding of creativity and problem solving, and scratches my itch as a “builder.”

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

My original motivation in starting my own business was control over my time. I wanted to travel, and that just didn’t work with only 10 vacation days. 

Now, I have two young kids and I love the flexibility to shift my work around if there’s something going on or somebody’s sick. Running a service business isn’t easy and sometimes I miss the simplicity of just punching in and out, but I’m grateful every day that I get to decide my own work. I don’t have to ask anybody’s permission to take the afternoon off to play dinosaurs. There’s also more upside, and I’m working on improving my processes to make my time more profitable.