Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

I hope you all enjoyed the weekend.

I finally stopped procrastinating the creation of a better lead magnet for this newsletter (you’re welcome to download it here) and played a little golf. I find my brain works better when I juxtapose online/offline tasks. Ok – golf isn’t really a task. 😉

This week’s message is similarly about using old school knowledge for your new school startup.

Let's get into it.

Sun Tzu wrote thirteen short chapters twenty-five centuries ago.

The business world has since beaten the book into dust looking for warlike metaphors — attack your competitors, defeat your rivals, outflank the market. I'm not here to add to that pile.

One line of his has stuck with me for a different reason: victorious warriors win first and then go to war. Not as a war metaphor, but as a reframe.

The people who actually ship things have already decided they're going to. Everything after the decision is just execution.

Most people I talk to are stuck before the decision.

I have an Evernote file where I have gathered ideas since 2011. (yes, I realize that’s outdated – my daily workhorse is Notion integrated with Claude)

Some of the ideas in that file are dead. Some I've already launched. A few are still just sitting there — good ones, ones I come back to, ones I've done nothing about. Every time I open that file I have the same thought: I should really do something with that. Then I close the file.

I'd bet a lot of Launch Key readers have their own version of that file. A Notion page. A literal journal entry. A napkin in a drawer. A conversation you keep having with your spouse on the back porch. The specifics don't matter. What matters is the pattern — an idea that keeps coming back, and the fact that you haven't started.

Herminia Ibarra, who teaches at London Business School and has spent decades studying how people actually change careers, puts it bluntly. "Knowing," she writes, "is the result of doing and experimenting." Not the other way around.

This contradicts everything the corporate world trained us to do.

We were taught to plan, analyze, build the business case, get alignment, then execute. That sequence works when you're inside a company with resources, quarterly reviews, and a boss expecting a deck.

It's the wrong sequence when the project is you.

Ibarra's research on mid-career reinvention found that the people who actually make the pivot don't plan their way in — they act their way in. Small experiments. Side projects. A draft landing page. A new lead magnet. A conversation with someone doing something adjacent. They learn by moving, and the direction clarifies as they go.

Every week I hear some version of the same sentence from readers: "I'll start when things settle down."

Things are not going to settle down.

That's not how it works. The quarter ends and another begins. The travel schedule resets. Your parents get older. Your kids' calendars shift. The window you're waiting for is a window that's not going to open on its own.

The people I watch actually get something off the ground are not the ones with the most free time. They're the ones who stopped treating the idea like something they'd get to and started treating it like something they were doing — even if "doing it" was 30 minutes on a Saturday morning.

Thirty minutes a week can build a business in a year. Zero minutes a week is still zero.

Here's what's different right now, and it's the part worth getting straight.

There used to be dozens of steps between "I have an idea" and "I have a thing other people can see.”

Design it, hire the developer, learn the tool, figure out the platform, write the copy, build the site, sell it, service it, account for it. Each step was its own project, and each one was where most ideas went to die.

Those steps are now minutes, not months. You can describe what you want in plain English and get a working version back while you eat lunch. That's not hype — that's what this week looks like for anyone who's actually using today’s tools.

Which means the excuse that "I don't know how to build it" no longer holds. The excuse that "it would take too long" no longer holds.

What's left is the decision.

Pick the idea. You know which one.

Don't write a plan. Don't map the next five years. Don't make a list of everything you'd need to learn first. Take one step this week that costs less than an afternoon.

Draft the first page. Register the name. Send one email to someone who's done it. Open the document and write the first paragraph.

That's the whole assignment. Not the launch. The start.

Do you need a little help deciding what to do with your idea? Here are 12 Encore Career examples.

Sun Tzu's water metaphor gets misquoted in a thousand LinkedIn posts, but the actual lesson is simple: water doesn't plan the river. It finds it. You've been reading the terrain your whole career. You know how to flow.

Decide. Then move.

Now go launch something 🚀

Whether you're navigating boardroom negotiations, competitive environments, or personal challenges, Sun Tzu’s principles remain as sharp and relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. His philosophy champions intellect over aggression, precision over chaos, and clarity over confusion.

AI is moving from experiment… to essential.

Every major industry is integrating it.
Every major company is investing in it.

By late 2025, AI was already an $800B market — growing at a pace that could push it well beyond $1 trillion in the years ahead.

Cloud infrastructure is scaling fast.
AI-enabled devices are multiplying.
Automation is becoming standard.

But here’s the real question…

When trillions flow into this transformation — which stocks stand to benefit most?

Our new report reveals 10 AI stocks positioned across the backbone of this shift — from the companies powering the infrastructure… to those embedding intelligence into everyday systems.

If you want exposure to one of the defining growth trends of this decade, start here.

Download the Report Now

How about a completely new twist on music? Or a classic take on something new.

Have you heard the 50’s soul version of Jump Around?

One of the more interesting AI mashups I’ve heard is rap songs redone as 50’s soul or 60’s motown. Creative indeed. Eminiem, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent and even Michael Jackson and the Bee Gees revised into classic sounds that work!

📰 Startup Marketing Newsletter : Your cheat sheet for marketing news, insights & tips tailored for the startup space.

🗃 Dealroom Business Success Uncovered : Learn directly from billionaire entrepreneurs on how to grow a business. Join a community of 2,000+ innovators.

📕 MGMT Playbook : Practical management insights straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

🤖 AI Report : 400,000+ business leaders (and teams at IBM, AWS & Zapier) start their day with The AI Report. 5 minutes. Plain English. No hype.