A Little more About Me

I'm a person who has spent a lot of time observing the world around me, learning from other people, and learning from my own mistakes. Although I question some of the things I see around me, I try not to allow my perspective and personal values to override my moral values when drawing my own conclusions.

I don't consider myself someone who has all the answers, because I don't. But what I do have is a lifetime of experience, knowledge, and wisdom that has helped keep me afloat through challenges, difficult times, and periods of hardship. And in the midst of those experiences, I still strive to become a better person.

And though life be lifing, as I sometimes put it, I've been blessed to keep a willingness to learn from those experiences, a willingness to share what I've learned, an open mind—even when what I learn challenges what I believe—and a walk of faith that has carried me throughout my life, even through the times when I wasn't always living the way I should.

How I Got Started In Online Business

My interest in entrepreneurship started long before I ever built a website. I grew up watching my dad work for Cudahy Meat Packing Company. But when he finished working his regular day job, Dad would also use his carpentry skills to build and remodel homes for people who knew him or had heard about his work.

I didn't understand it at the time, but watching him work one job and then use his own skills to create additional opportunities planted something in me growing up. The idea that a person could take what they knew how to do and use it to create something of their own stayed with me.

Years later, as an adult, I moved to Enid, Oklahoma in 2005. Somewhere between then and 2008, I bought myself a computer and eventually joined SMC, Specialty Merchandise Corporation, a wholesale distributor program, in June of 2008. That became the beginning of my own entrepreneurship journey.

During that year, I received a paper brochure from SMC offering members an opportunity to join their website program and sell my own products online. That caught my attention. It gave me a reason to start learning about website-building platforms, which eventually led me to learn about Content Management Systems like WordPress.

The Start of Learning How to Build Websites

From there, I began exploring the Internet, websites, how they were built, and the larger world of online business and marketing.

I learned about search engines, content creation, affiliate marketing, multi-level marketing, digital products, social media marketing, and a little about HTML and CSS—the more technical side of designing websites. Eventually, that learning expanded into artificial intelligence (AI) and many of the other technologies people use to build businesses online.

The online business, Internet-marketing, and make-money-online spaces looked very different back then compared with how those spaces have evolved over the years.

From where I stood at the time, there weren't many people of color visible in the particular spaces where I was learning. And I don't remember seeing Black Americans on YouTube teaching the kinds of "online business" and "Internet-marketing" subjects I was trying to understand.

Because I was still trying to understand how all of these different pieces fit together, I kept moving forward the only way I knew how:

-> I kept searching for information,
-> I kept studying what I found,
-> I kept testing ideas,
-> I kept building websites,
-> I kept making mistakes, and
-> I kept paying attention to the results.

Some approaches worked well enough for me to keep learning from them. Others didn't work at all and forced me to rethink what I was doing. Either way, each experience taught me valuable lessons that stayed with me.

Over the years, I've made plenty of mistakes. I've forgotten things I once knew and had to learn them all over again. I've watched strategies come and go. And I've learned that following what everyone else is doing online isn't necessarily the best way to build something worthwhile—or something of your own.

One lesson has stayed with me the longest:

Don’t compete to look the same as everyone else online. Learn from other people—YES. But develop your own ideas, your own approach, and your own way of thinking and doing things. Build something people can recognize as yours, and give them reasons to trust you and what you’re building.

That belief influences how I approach creativity, online business and marketing, and life.

More Than Business

My interests aren't limited to websites and entrepreneurship.

I'm also interested in understanding people—how we think, why we make the decisions we make, how our experiences shape the way we see ourselves and others, and how our personal values influence the way we treat one another.

Some of the hardest changes in my life have involved confronting what was happening inside my own heart. Over the years, difficult experiences with people created resentment that eventually became something much deeper. For a long time, I carried those feelings with me.

When I began seriously studying the Bible again in 2024, I found myself examining not only other people, but myself. Scripture forced me to think more deeply about human nature, judgment, forgiveness, personal responsibility, and the condition of my own heart.

That process did not erase every feeling or struggle I had. Some are still very real for me. But my faith has challenged me not to allow resentment, anger, or hatred to determine how I treat people. I believe people are capable of doing terrible things, but I also believe that we are held accountable for the choices we make. My choice is to keep working toward a better heart, even when that work is difficult.

All of this has changed the way I think about people, judgment, assumptions, and how easily our own experiences can influence what we believe about someone else. My beliefs and perspectives have changed over the years as I've learned more about myself, other people, and life.

My faith has become an increasingly important part of both journeys—in my life and in business. Biblical principles have influenced how I think about integrity, truth, responsibility, compassion, judgment, forgiveness, accountability, and how I conduct myself toward other people.

And I'm still learning—that's a work in progress.

Why I Created In-Home Entrepreneur

In-Home Entrepreneur grew out of years of learning, determination, experience, faith, and enduring the ups and downs of life—life just be lifing—but it also came from something much more personal.

I've come to believe that many everyday people possess knowledge, skills, abilities, ideas, and life experiences that have real value—but they may never have been shown how those things could become the starting point for creating something of their own.

In many ways, that belief connects back to what I saw my dad doing years ago. He worked his regular job, but he also used the skills he possessed to build and remodel homes for other people. The tools are different. The opportunities are different. Technology has changed what someone can build and who they can reach.

But the basic idea isn't all that different:

Take what you know, learn what you need to learn, and figure out how to create something useful with it. I want to take what I've spent years learning and make it useful to other people, particularly people who don't have unlimited money or resources to pursue an idea.

That's part of why I created In-Home Entrepreneur. It gives me a way to take what I've learned, continue learning myself, and use that knowledge to help someone else understand the process of building something of their own—one step at a time.

What Matters to Me

Integrity matters to me. Truth matters to me. How we treat other people matters to me.

I believe making money online is a legitimate purpose of building a business online. But I also believe how we pursue that money matters too. Success shouldn't require abandoning ethics, misleading people, copying someone else's creativity, taking advantage of someone's trust, or treating people merely as opportunities to make a sale.

I believe a business should:

-> Provide remarkable value
-> Respect the people it serves 
-> Earn their trust
-> Be built in a way that can continue over time

Those beliefs influence the work I do, but they're also part of how I strive to live my life.

I'm Still Learning... Still Growing... & Still Building

At this stage of my life, I'm not interested in pretending I've arrived somewhere that I haven't. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I'm still building. I'm still questioning what I see around me, and I'm still willing to change my mind when I realize I was wrong.

I'm taking what I've learned through business, online technology, faith, mistakes, successes, relationships, family, the people I've known, and simply living life—and trying to do something useful with it. I don't have everything figured out, and I don't expect that I ever will. What matters to me is continuing to learn, continuing to grow, and continuing to move forward with purpose.

👋 My name is Kevin Ross, and I'm still a work in progress.