Happy Friday!

I wanted to shoot this out on Monday, but TBH I needed a few days to recover from the weekend. This old dog can somewhat still hang, but I had my bestfriends fly down from Connecticut & Tampa for the weekend and damn it was alot.

There’s nothing better than getting to spend time unwinding with the people you love, but I feel like we did about 14 days worth of activities in 72 hours. Anyone else ever feel that way? You need a vacation from the vacation.

As much as I spend my time these days with entrepnuers of all type, its always nice to be grounded with my hometown friends who honestly dont give a fuck what I do for a living. We can just be real. Talk about life, girls, sports, problems. Things that make you feel young and like a little kid. Not the stress of a P&L, employees, the stress of every day work. Don’t get me wrong having friends who understand your business stress is great, but having friends who love you for you is equally if not more important.

You can probably imagine, I didn’t expect inspiration for this weekend to stem from the weekend hang. If anything it was time away from the laptop. But the craziest thing happened. I just installed a sauna at my house and we do this thing called the sauna ladder. We stay in for 8 minutes, then hose of for 8 seconds, then 7 minutes, and so on.

Half way sweating our demons out, one of my bestfriends Adam, who JUST LEFT his corporate job of nearly 10 years to start his own asphalt and concrete paving company broke saying how he never knew entrepreneurship was so lonely. His business is cranking, legit doing incredible, but he lives up in the woods of Connecticut where I am from and he could not stop talking about how different he feels from everybody around him. Nobody has the same work ethic. Nobody wants to build a better life. They just want to get drunk and live for the weekends. Like they haven’t grown up from our 21 year old days.

That’s when it hit me… building in isolation will make you crazy.

So today’s newsletter is going to be about the quiet killer that nobody preps you for when you start a company: Isolation. I’ve built brands in beach houses, on red-eyes, in rented garages and WeWorks. I’ve hired the wrong people. I’ve launched the wrong products. I’ve lost sleep over inventory shipments, drained bank accounts, and partner breakups.

But the thing that’s hit me hardest, again and again, is the feeling that I’m the only one who actually gets what I’m carrying. That if I stop paddling, the whole thing sinks. That nobody else really understands the weight. This is the part of entrepreneurship nobody glamorizes (and nobody should).

You go from being surrounded by people to sitting alone at a laptop making decisions that might cost you tens of thousands. You go from being celebrated for “starting something” to hearing crickets when it’s not moving fast enough. It’s really easy to go from full inboxes to a full-blown existential crisis about whether this is all even worth it.

Sound familiar? Yeah. Me too.

The Founder’s Paradox

Here’s the kicker: The more successful you become, the fewer people you can talk to about it.

Try explaining to your high school friends why profit feels worse than losses. Maybe the impossible task of opening up to your team about how burnt out you feel when they depend on your energy. Try coming home and telling your wife that the win didn’t hit like you thought it would, because now you’re worried you can’t repeat it.

Most people don’t get it. Not because they don’t care. But because they’ve never been in your seat. They’ve never had to make payroll while getting ghosted by a vendor, lay off a friend, or eat the blame for a product issue, investor misalignment, or Facebook tanking your ads overnight.

So what do we do? We put our heads down. We grind. We isolate. We start saying things like:

“I just need to push through.”

But here’s what I’ve learned: You can’t outwork loneliness, and you shouldn’t have to.

What It Looked Like for Me

After we scaled CROSSNET to record months (and years), I thought things would feel easier. More freedom, time, and definitely more wins. Instead? I felt more alone than ever.

The day-to-day pressure was different, but the expectations were higher. People assumed I had it all figured out. I didn’t. Not even close. I missed the camaraderie that we had in the early days. The makeshift-war-room convos. The late-night calls when everything was on fire.

And I realized something big: I didn’t need more advice. I needed to be in alignment with others.  I needed proximity to other people that I could say without a shadow of a doubt understood my perspective.  I needed people who were walking the same path. Not above me, not behind me, with me.

That’s exactly why we built The Founders Club.

Why We Built TFC (and Why It Matters)

The genesis of TFC wasn’t about in person masterminds, courses, or Slack groups. It was about solving that problem Adam felt and 24 year old Chris felt when I first moved to a new city. I wanted to solve the biggest pain point that almost every founder I knew was struggling with: The feeling that you’re in this alone.

I’ve spent the past two years heads down building a place where that never had to be the case. I went from creating a physical product and a pilates studio, to creating an environment that people craved. A place where people didn’t look at you like you had 15 heads when you started talking about your ROAS or your new landing page.

I’ve seen founders go from spinning in circles to scaling faster just because someone finally said, “Here’s what we did. Steal it.” We’ve had members:

• Slash their CAC in half in a quarter

• Rebuild org charts after one conversation

• Find co-founders, raise rounds, exit businesses

• Go on three week European trips with a new love

What Happens When You’re With the Right People

Here’s what I’ve seen happen inside TFC: You start building with momentum again, not just motion. You stop doubting your instincts, because you’re finally getting real feedback. You stop wasting time Googling what to do next, because someone’s already done it. Most importantly, you start enjoying the game again

Just yesterday 256 founders joined our all hands call with Mark Cuban. The hour Q&A was legendary and I was blown away by how down to Earth he is was. Believe it or not, he’s a human and just wants to get better like you and me.

When you’re around the right people, business gets fun again. Not because it’s suddenly easy, but because you’re not doing it alone anymore. What’s better than that?

If You’re Feeling the Drift

Here’s my ask: If you’ve been reading this and nodding along, if you’ve been quietly wondering, “Does anyone else feel this way?”, I want you to know:

Yes. We all do.

And the sooner you get yourself into a group where you can stop pretending otherwise, the faster everything changes. You don’t need to carry this alone, and certainly don’t need to pretend you’ve got it all figured out.

If you’re the kind of founder who builds with integrity, shows up for others, and actually wants to get better? We built this club for you.

The Founders Club is What I Wish I Had

The way that TFC looks now is exactly how we originally envisioned that it would be. Hundreds of tactical, high-level founders building meaningful companies, and helping each other win. If that’s the kind of room you want in your corner? You know where to find us.

Hope you have an incredible rest of the week!

Thanks for caring always,

Chris