Welcome back to the Launch Key 🚀

This week: the business I'm not starting, and a Harvard professor's exercise for deciding what to stop chasing.

Let's get into it.

I’m growing my list of businesses I could start tomorrow.

It isn't short. Between the daily Futurist email, my X.com feed, a stack of podcasts every week, the quarterly report I put together, and the idea pipeline that feeds this newsletter, I come across great ideas almost every week.

I'm not starting any of them.

I'm 63, not 33. I've run an agency before, and I have too many other things I want to do with the years ahead. So I crossed "start another agency" off my list. The ideas still go somewhere: they go here.

It turns out a Harvard professor has a name for what I’m doing.

In From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks tells the story of a Wall Street financier. Brooks asked him a simple question: would he rather be special or happy?

He picked special. Then, without being asked, he admitted he was miserable.

Brooks calls this the striver's curse. The drive that built the career is the same drive that keeps adding to the list long after more stops making us happier. More titles. More money. More wins. One more company.

Most of us got here by adding to the list. It's hard to stop.

Brooks has a formula for this, from his Atlantic column "How to Want Less":

Satisfaction = What you have ÷ What you want

Most of us spend our careers working on the top half of that fraction. Get more and satisfaction goes up, at least for a while. Then the wants catch up, as they always do, and you're back on the merry-go-round.

The bottom half is the part nobody talks about. Want less and satisfaction goes up just as surely, and it lasts longer.

That's the idea behind the reverse bucket list. A normal bucket list is about adding. This one is about taking things off.

Give it an hour, a legal pad, and some honesty.

Here's one that keeps surfacing and I keep rejecting.

I live in the fastest growing county in the state. And I think about the home-service trades: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, pool service, landscaping, pest control, cleaning. Most of these businesses use AI the way most of us use a gym membership in February. They've tried the free version of ChatGPT and stopped there.

Someone who builds a scalable AI back office for these businesses (scheduling, customer support, sales follow-up, maybe web and marketing on top) could build a very nice service business. The customers have money, the problems costs them every day, and the tools to fix it finally exist.

I know how to build that. Its not the same as my web development services firm, but all services business face the same problems. And instead of hiring to fix them, like I did, today most could be automated.

And that's why it's crossed off. Not because the idea is bad. It's good. But building it would mean taking on a life I've already lived, and giving up the things that are on my real list: family, friends, tech experimentation, this newsletter, the book I'm writing, chasing fish and golf balls.

So I'm giving the idea to you instead. If you're 45 and itching, take it. Next week I'll show you how the numbers work now. AI changes the margins on a service business more than you'd think.

"Hold on, Rob. Isn't this whole newsletter about building?"

Yep, and older founders do very well. Research from Azoulay, Jones, Kim and Miranda (2020) found the average founder of the fastest-growing new US companies is 45. A 50-year-old is about twice as likely as a 30-year-old to build one of them.

So wanting less doesn't mean not building. It means not building everything. Derek Sivers puts it simply: if it's not a "hell yes," it's a no. The reverse bucket list is how you find your hell yes. Everything you cross off frees up time and attention for the one thing that deserves them.

When AI makes almost anything buildable, choosing what not to build is what sets you apart.

Run the exercise this week. Then hit reply and tell me one thing you crossed off. I read every reply, and I'll share the best ones (with your permission) in a future issue.

Bet on yourself. Just not on everything.

Now go launch something 🚀

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From Strength to Strength — Arthur C. Brooks (2022)

The reverse bucket list is one exercise from a much bigger argument. Brooks starts with psychologist Raymond Cattell's two kinds of intelligence. Fluid intelligence is raw problem-solving speed, and it peaks early. Crystallized intelligence is judgment, pattern recognition, and the ability to teach, and it keeps growing into your 60s and beyond.

Most careers pay you for the first and then slowly stop paying you as it fades. Brooks's advice is to stop fighting for the first curve and move deliberately onto the second.

His model is Bach. Late in his career his music was considered old-fashioned, and his own son was more famous than he was. So Bach turned to teaching, and that teaching produced some of his most lasting work.

If you've ever wondered why you're better at your work than you were at 35 but less valued for it, this is the book that explains it.

Grok Bot (xAI / SpaceXAI, beta)

Remember the home-services business I crossed off my list? This is the kind of tool that makes it possible.

Grok Bot is an AI agent that runs on its own cloud computer. It logs into the apps you already use and works across them: inboxes, CRMs, scheduling tools, even websites with no integration options. You message it from your desktop or phone, and it comes back when the job is done or when it needs your approval. Show it a workflow once and it can save it as a routine.

That's the scheduling, follow-up, and CRM work a plumbing company would pay someone to handle.

Unknowns:

This is a tool to watch and experiment with, not one to run your business on yet.

The Tim Ferriss Show — Arthur C. Brooks (Sept 2023)

Brooks walks through the reverse bucket list in his own words, along with success addiction and why strivers are so bad at being happy. It's a long conversation and it rewards the time. Good company for a long drive. If you'd rather read, there's a full transcript.

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