The Gen X Creativity Reboot: How to Build a Business Without the Trap

I don’t know what’s in the air, but every Gen Xer I know is making things again.

I wrote about this shift a few weeks ago. How we're picking up guitars and paintbrushes again. But it’s not just hobbies. It’s business, too.

Newsletters. Courses. YouTube channels. Side hustles.

It’s like someone hit “restore factory settings” on the part of our brain we accidentally muted for 20 years.

Some of us are founders who forgot what it felt like to build anything that wasn’t a spreadsheet or a fire drill.

Some of us are still in corporate, sneaking our solopreneur ideas into Notes apps between meetings.

Different lives. Same itch.

And here’s the part nobody really says out loud:

Our creativity never died. It just got buried under responsibility. Kids. Mortgages. Careers. Bosses. Calendars. A million logins. A thousand tech tools we don’t even like.

We weren’t “burnt out.” We were distracted.

And now that the noise is starting to fade a little, everything we pushed down for years is coming back up.

But here’s the catch nobody warns you about.

When the creativity comes back, it doesn’t come back quietly. It comes back with a list.

Start that Skool community. Launch the podcast. Fix the business. Launch a product. Make that course. Start that AI newsletter side hustle.

Great problem to have… until you sit down to actually do something.

Then the same question hits both overwhelmed founders and side hustlers:

“Where do I aim all this?”

Because ideas aren’t the bottleneck anymore. Strategic structure is.

The older I get, the more I realize the stakes have changed. The real danger isn’t failure, it's wasting time.

When I started sketching out The WorXshop, my biggest worry wasn’t failing. It was building and succeeding at the wrong thing.

I’ve done the 60-hour-a-week grind before. I’m not signing up for that again.

This time, I wanted to be sure the thing I’m building actually fits the next chapter of my life. I wanted to build the kind of business I wouldn't want to retire from.

A business I can grow into… not one I get trapped inside.

So I did what a geeky marketing guy does: I brought in a "second set of eyes" to check the prints.

I built a custom AI agent to look over my plan. I didn't want it to tell me "good job." I wanted it to find the cracks.

I made it check my assumptions. I had it stress-test the lifestyle angle. I forced it to tell me where I was building a trap instead of an asset.

It saved me months of guessing.

And now it can save you month of guessing too…

I spent months spinning my wheels, overthinking my own business. I wasn't exactly stuck, but I needed clarity and some serious guardrails to lock it all in.

So, I did what I always do: I built a system to fix it.

I created a specific set of AI prompts to act as a mirror.

I fed it my resume, my hobbies, and my random skills, and I forced it to tell me exactly what my "Unfair Advantage" was.

Then, I made it stress-test my ideas to see if they were actually profitable.

Finally, I had it build me a roadmap to show the fastest way to $100k based everything it knew about me.

It took me months to figure this out. With these prompts, it now takes only 20 minutes.

I’m packaging those exact prompts as The Gen eXit Launch Codes.

It includes the three tools I used to find my focus:

If you’re ready to stop guessing and start building, grab them now.

Poison – “Nothin’ But A Good Time”

About 15ish years ago I saw Brett Michaels play at show at Octoberfest. I noticed between some songs he was changing his shirts (his sweaty shirts).

I thought it was a little peculiar until after the show.

When we were leaving I saw his merch table auctioning those sweaty shirts off to a pack of very eager middle aged women.

Didn’t work quite as well when I tried at my shows (kidding of course).

ANYWAY…

Not sure what that has to do with this post other than just being a segue these lyrics…

I raise a toast to all of us who are breakin' our backs every day

If wanting a good life is such a crime Lord, then, put me away, yeah,

The good life looks a little different in my 50s than it did in my teens but I want it more now than I did back then.

Your creativity coming back isn't random. It's signaling something.

You're ready to build again. But don't just start hammering nails.

You need a schematic to make sure you point that energy in the right direction.

I’ve already done the heavy lifting with my Launch Code prompts. The rest is on you.

👉 Check out the Gen eXit Launch Codes.

Have a good one,

Corey

P.S. Is your resume lying to you?

I sat down with Michelle McCowan-Campbell to discuss the "Invisible Employee Trap" and why you need to stop waiting for permission to be great.

Watch: Your Resume Is Lying To You

P.S.S. Don't just reboot your creativity—reboot your business model. Here is why staying small is the best way to avoid the trap: Why I Stopped Scaling (And You Should Too)