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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

Some of my favorite parts of North Carolina, and many areas throughout the south, are unrecognizable today.

Stop and be thankful if you didn’t get hit by Hurricane Helene. My prayers go out to the families of those who perished and those who have lost everything. The numbers are staggering.

I spent the weekend just trying to keep up, running a generator and cleaning up broken branches. But we only lost trees.

How can we keep up when change can happen in an instant?

Resourcefulness and preparation.

Let's get into it.

Comment below and let me know if we’re on the right track.

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

• Modern Tools

• Old School Wisdom

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

It only takes a few hours of using a phone hotspot to realize just how good we have it.

Without power, my weekend was tethered to the ability to keep a couple of freezers cold, make coffee, monitor Duke Energy and check news. The images from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and then my beloved North Carolina mountains were shocking.

Unplugged can be great - until you NEED to see what’s happening.

Color television was one of the most complex and transformative technological innovations of the past 100 years.

It changed our expectations.

Credit color TV to the growth of consumerism, the expansion of the suburbs, the swaying of public opinion and sometimes breathless coverage of catastrophic events.

But it took half a century – 50 years – to get into more than half the homes in America. Then we expected technicolor real time images and video.

In 1960, my grandfather (below) imagined a world where your videophone would transmit your picture as well as your voice.

It only took 47 years - and the one and only Steve Jobs - to meet that expectation.

We can’t imagine that slow pace of technology today.

Internet Access took less than 10 years to reach 50% of American homes.

Everyone assumes internet access today.

Juxtapose internet growth with the explosion of ChatGPT – which gained 100 million users in less than 2 months.

Clearly the speed of technological change is faster than ever before.

How do you keep up?

Free education.

That’s the tweet.

There is so much free education its overwhelming, but it’s like preparation before a hurricane.

You have to be proactive. Resourceful people are taking advantage of the available tools.

From world class universities to top-tier technology firms, free education is preparation for the uncertain future. A few examples:

• Oxford University - Starting a Consulting Business

• MooC Course Listings

• Best Large Language Model courses

Don’t just wish you were prepared when change happens.

Now go launch something 🚀 

Modern Tools

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Old School Wisdom

Basic services have been severed to millions of Americans and no amount of preparation works when your house is floating down the river in a 100-year flood.

Old school wisdom is required for survival.

As the water has receded, it’s shown just how many roads are impassible. Many smaller towns are completely washed away. Resourceful citizens have found ways.

Farm equipment, skid steers and chain saws are being used to clear bridges and create road passages.

Mule trains are being used to send in supplies.

HAM radio folks sent out the first distress calls.

But it was quickly followed by free internet communication given away by independent journalist Nick Sortor, who set up two Starlinks for public use in Asheville. He’s getting 30 more today.

Resourceful, prepared individuals were 2 days ahead of the response from elected officials.

No matter how much we love technology, old school wisdom saved lives as this disaster unfolded. But the losses are unimaginable. And besides our prayers, these people will need our help for years.

A few suggestions if you are so inclined:

• Samaritan’s Purse

• Tennessee Baptist Disaster Relief

• NC Disaster Relief Fund

Recommendations

💹 Growth Hunter : Transform ambition into action: your exclusive source for strategies that scale.

📰 Marketing Memos : Proven Marketing Tips for Founders

🏆 IDiyas : Weekly patent newsletter highlighting the most prolific inventors, engineers, executives and entrepreneurs.

🧠 Seven Deadly Stupidities : Discover the patterns that lead to failure and learn how to avoid them.

💡 Product-Led Geek : The weekly newsletter unlocking the secrets of product-led success.

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Visual Crapshoot