Raise your hand if you ever felt like you’ve missed yet another gold rush…Or the dot-com boom.Or social media before it got loud.Or being able to rock a pair of Guirbaud jeans in the halls of your high school in 1989 because your dad wasn’t Daddy Warbucks…Then something kicks in once you’ve been around long enough.You didn’t miss it, you’re just early again.There’s always another one.After about 30 years of watching the “next big thing” come and go, you start to see a pattern. Opportunity doesn’t show up once. It shows up in waves.People don’t usually miss opportunities because they’re…

You don’t need another vision board. And you definitely don’t need another article telling you to “find your why.”You’re 50 (or close to it). You know your “why.” It’s called paying the mortgage and not dying of boredom in a cubicle.You need a wrench. You need the tools to actually build something.I didn’t choose this tool because I love software. I chose it because I’m 53 and I’m tired of working harder than I have to.I realized that if I built my audience on social media, I was building a house on rented land. If the algorithm changed, my business…

Brought to you by the fine folks at The WorXshop — Where Gen Xers save a crap ton of time staying relevant with AI, marketing, and business strategy from people their own age. No hype. No rabbit holes. No eye-rolling tech bro talk. Join free during early accessI don’t know what’s in the air, but every Gen Xer I know is making things again.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…

There’s a problem with most “Side Hustles”If you’re like me (Gen X, 50+), you’ve searched for “how to make money online” and immediately regretted it.The results are usually a nightmare:Drive for Uber? (Great, trade your car’s transmission for pennies).Start a TikTok Channel? (Which requires constant energy and “performance”).Dropshipping? (I don’t have time to answer customer service emails about lost packages).We don’t want a second job. We’re tired. We want an asset.I spent 17 years as a mechanical draftsman. I think in terms of leverage and structure.We need something that uses our brain and years of experience, not our backs. We…

Let me take you back for a second…Here was my morning routine:Shuffle into work like a zombie who forgot its purpose.Around 10 a.m., the daydreams kicked in. Being anywhere but there. Doing anything but that job.Then I’d feel guilty for wanting more and force myself not to open a browser tab and work on my exit plan (I believe the kids call this quiet quitting these days).Rinse and repeat for months.When people talk about feeling “stuck,” I get it. I lived it.Most of the Gen Xers who reach out to me over the past 13 years until now? They’re in…

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We are back home in Raleigh after spending most of the month on a cruise through the Panama Canal. As a result this monthly update is almost a month late. Better late than never, I suppose.  After being very busy traveling throughout 2025, we are finally home for a long period of time. So far, we have nothing planned for more than two months. The plan is to stick around Raleigh during Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate with our extended families. I’m also hoping to work on a few deferred…

A big thank you to beehiiv for making this newsletter possible.If you’ve been kicking around the idea of a side hustle or just want another income stream that doesn’t suck up your weekends, start a newsletter.Beehiiv’s new Winter Release made it even easier. AI website builder. Better growth features. Paid subscriptions with no fees. All the stuff you actually need, without the usual tech headaches.It’s hands-down one of the easiest ways to create something of your own. No products to ship, no boss breathing down your neck, no fancy tech required.I use beehiiv because it’s stupid-simple and actually fun to…

A big thank you to beehiiv for making this newsletter possible.If you’ve been kicking around the idea of a side hustle or just want another income stream that doesn’t suck up your weekends, start a newsletter.Beehiiv’s new Winter Release made it even easier. AI website builder. Better growth features. Paid subscriptions with no fees. All the stuff you actually need, without the usual tech headaches.It’s hands-down one of the easiest ways to create something of your own. No products to ship, no boss breathing down your neck, no fancy tech required.I use beehiiv because it’s stupid-simple and actually fun to…

A big thank you to beehiiv for making this newsletter possible.If you’ve been kicking around the idea of a side hustle or just want another income stream that doesn’t suck up your weekends, start a newsletter.It’s hands-down one of the easiest ways to create something of your own. No products to ship, no boss breathing down your neck, no fancy tech required.I use beehiiv because it’s stupid-simple and actually fun to use.The first time I used ChatGPT, I thought I was onto something big.Type a prompt, get magic back. Simple.But a few months in, I realized I wasn’t really using…

I had an epiphany recently.There’s been a common thread running through everything I’ve done the past 20+ years — I’m obsessed with leverage.Building stuff that keeps growing without adding more grind.In this post, I’ll break down how how Gen X entrepreneurs can use business leverage frameworks like the Star Principle and Naval Ravikant’s Four Types of Leverage to build a sustainable business that grows without more hours.My Journey to Understanding Business LeverageBack when I was a mechanical draftsman, I figured out how to design complex documentation for standard product lines that could be reproduced across departments with little or no…