The idea behind The Grind Works really started during COVID.

At the time, I was running my home inspection business, which had been my main source of income for years. Then COVID hit, and suddenly a business I had always been able to rely on felt a lot less certain. Inspections slowed down, everything became harder to predict, and I started thinking seriously about something I had only considered in passing before: I needed another way to make money.

At first, I was not trying to reinvent my life. I was looking for a second source of income. Something I could build alongside the inspection business. Something that was not completely dependent on me getting in the truck, driving to a house, doing the inspection and getting paid for that one job.

The more I thought about it, the more appealing that became.

If I could build something online, maybe it could eventually give me more income without adding more inspection appointments to my calendar. Maybe it could let me work fewer hours. Maybe it could give me the freedom to work from anywhere. Maybe, over time, it could become something substantial enough that I would not have to rely so heavily on the inspection business at all.

That was the idea, anyway.

So I started looking.

And that was probably my first mistake.

Not the looking itself. The amount of looking.

The internet is very good at convincing you there is a perfect business model waiting just around the corner. I would find someone talking about newsletters and think, That makes sense. I could do that. Then I would find someone building a YouTube channel and think maybe video was the better opportunity. Then it was digital products. Then affiliate marketing. Then paid newsletters. Then communities. Then SEO. Then social media.

Every path seemed reasonable when I was reading about it.

And every path came with someone explaining why their way was the way to do it.

Before long, I was not just researching online businesses. I was consuming an entire industry built around teaching people how to build online businesses.

I bought courses. I subscribed to newsletters. I watched videos. I read posts. I followed people who seemed to have figured it out. I learned about lead magnets, funnels, landing pages, audience growth, monetization, content strategy, paid acquisition, organic growth and a dozen other things I had never needed to think about while inspecting houses.

The problem was that I did not just consume the advice.

I acted on a lot of it.

I started newsletters. I experimented with different audiences. I built websites. I tried YouTube. I tested ads. I worked on digital-product ideas.

The Inspection Insider alone has been through three name changes and several different versions. It started as a newsletter for my home inspection clients, then I changed the focus to home inspectors, and then changed it again to help homeowners.

Some ideas lasted longer than others. Some were better than others. A few actually showed promise.

The Inspection Insider has now grown to around 2,400 subscribers, which proved to me that I could build an audience from scratch. I learned how to publish regularly, how to attract subscribers, how to create content and how to test different ideas.

So it was not all wasted effort.

But there was a pattern I could not ignore.

Every time I started getting traction with something, another idea would appear, usually with bigger and better promises attached to it.

Maybe I had chosen the wrong audience. Maybe YouTube had more upside. Maybe I should sell a course. Maybe I should build a paid community. Maybe I needed a different newsletter. Maybe I should be using AI differently. Maybe I needed a better growth strategy.

There was always another thing that seemed more promising than the thing I was already working on.

And because I kept changing direction, I rarely gave any one thing enough time to find out what it could become.

That is the part that finally started bothering me.

I had spent years learning how to build an online business and accumulated enough information to fill a bookshelf, but I still had not built the thing I originally went looking for during COVID: a dependable source of online income that gave me more freedom and less dependence on physically showing up for every dollar I earned.

At some point, the problem stopped being a lack of knowledge.

I knew enough.

Probably too much.

The problem was me.

I kept allowing the next idea, the next strategy or the next opportunity to pull me away from what I was already building.

What I needed was not more information.

I needed to pick something, keep working on it and stick around long enough to find out whether it actually worked.

That realization is where The Grind Works comes from.

And yes, I realize there is some irony in deciding to stop starting new things by starting another newsletter.

But The Grind Works is not meant to replace what I am already building.

Right now, the business I am building is The Inspection Insider.

I am going to grow the audience, experiment with YouTube, test different ways to attract subscribers, create products and find out what people are actually willing to pay for.

The Grind Works is where I am going to document that process.

It is partly a way to hold myself accountable, partly a record of what I am trying, and hopefully something useful for anyone else trying to build their own thing without getting buried under another mountain of advice.

Some of what I try will work.

Some of it will not.

The important part is that I am going to stick around long enough to find out.

And I am going to share the results as I go: what I tried, what happened, what it cost, how much time it took, what made money, what did not, and whether I would do it again.

Because I am no longer particularly interested in what someone says should work.

I want to know what happens when I actually do the work.

I am not starting from the finish line. I do not have the successful online business yet.

That is the point.

This is the part where I build it.

And if you have spent too much time jumping from one idea to another too, maybe you can build yours alongside me. We might even save each other from making a few unnecessary mistakes along the way.

Ron
The Grind Works

Cut the noise. Build something real.