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 and used my new friend ChatGPT to help me sort it out.

I built a custom business audit GPT and had it look over my plan to keep me honest and on track.

I made it check my assumptions. I had it stress-test the lifestyle angle and run my plan through proven frameworks from people way smarter than me.

Pretty handy. And it saved me months of guessing.

I recorded the free video inside The WorXshop.

It’s a case study I didn’t want to do in public.

I walk through what’s working, what’s bloated, where the energy actually is, and how to use AI to save a crap ton of time deciding what to build next.

No polished slides. No “guru stuff.” Just me doing a screen share.

If your creativity is waking back up and you feel that pull to build something — but you want to ensure you aren't building a trap — this business audit video will help you find your next move.

You get it free when you join the WorXshop (free tier). Here’s where to get it:

👉 Join The WorXshop & Watch the Free Case Study (The video is waiting inside the Founder Fit Blueprint module)

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. You just need a system to point it in the right direction.

Start with the audit video and let me show you how I’m doing it.

See you inside The WorXshop.

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