Hey friends,

The last two months have absolutely rocked me. It feels like a season of life & business where you just keep getting hit in the face, but you keep going because you believe in what you’re building and see the future.

In the just the past sixty days I’ve:

Somewhere in between all those bullet points, being a present husband, good friend, and training for a 47 mile Ultrahike called Rim2Rim2Rim and the NYC marathon, I also started writing the first chapter of my book, I Wish I Knew. The idea is simple: pull together the real lessons from 100 vetted founders inside The Founders Club, the stuff nobody tells you until you're already in it, and put it in one place. 500 to 800 words per founder, landing around 200 pages.

If I'm going to do it, it has to be at the highest standard. We've all done things half-assed and had that feeling of "that wasn't a good reflection of what I'm capable of." I don't want that feeling with this one.

And then, right in the middle of all of it, I got news that I think will make for a few epic chapters. One of our members just exited for $7 billion. Another is about to IPO for $2 billion. Absolutely insane. The craziest thing is that they exist, show up, and engage in the club just like any other member we have.

When we started this thing, the goal was simple: create an environment for people to make real friends and provide a sounding board to help solve the occasional problem or provide inspiration. Everybody was just starting off, doing a couple million bucks, figuring it out. I never saw the day that billionaires would be reaching out to host events and referring members.

But what nobody tells you about growing something this big is that the reward for solving problems is more work. Now it's on me to make sure these people actually get what they pay for.

Here's what we changed, and what you might be able to pull from it for your own business.

Probably like you. The business we have today is not the same we have today. Two different companies wearing the same name. Just with a few extra zeros in the bank account and hundreds of different employees in the process.

With the first 250 members, it was a grind. Small intimate dinners, one city at a time. For over two years. Aaron and I in every room, building relationships one at a time. Flying everywhere and anywhere in the sake of new friendships and relationships. I’ll never forget that small Atlanta dinner where 7 people showed up, 4 of them being sponsors. That model worked, until it didn't.

When the business started to grow, we had to slow travel to actually focus on the team. Running and gunning like we were fresh off a breakup was just not sustainable. Members outside our core cities started feeling like an afterthought, and there was no version of us flying to every city every week. What attracted the first 250 people was quietly working against us at the next 500.

So we changed it. We brought on local champions — members who volunteered their own time to help run things in their city. That got us further, but the standard we hold ourselves to is Four Seasons level, every touchpoint, every time. You can't replicate the heart of our team with volunteers running their own companies on the side. So we built a dedicated community team, whose sole job is supporting members and solving problems in real time, 24 hours a day. Sitting at 1,615 members right now is proof it worked.

Here's the part that took me longer to accept than it should have: Just because things are GOOD NOW, doesn’t mean they will be forever. You have to constantly be striving for innovation and perfection, because things change and what worked in May might just straight up stop working in July. The thing that gets you from A to B is never the thing that gets you from B to C. If you're not actively looking for what's about to stop working, it already has, you just don't know it yet!

1% better every day. 365 small decisions can look like Mount Rushmore by the end of the year.

For a long time, our community team's job was to answer. Somebody had a question, they got an answer. Somebody needed an intro, they got one. Somebody had an issue, we solved it fast, around the clock. That's support. For a while, I thought that was the whole job.

Here's what I got wrong. Support shows up when something's broken. Success means somebody is in your corner even when nothing is broken. Making sure the thing you're paying for is not only working, but you’re so damn happy you want to refer everyone you know. Kinda like this weighted Omporho vest I got for training. Legit the best thing ever.

Our community team still does that work, and they're great at it. But this month, we added something on top: every member now has a regional director. One person, assigned to you, who you can call anytime, text with feedback, or vent to when something's not working. Someone who checks in before you have to ask, and knows which events you'd want to be at before you see the invite.

Can you add something like this in your business?

Support reacts. Success anticipates. A regional director's whole job is depth, knowing where you are in your business, who in the room could actually help you, and making that introduction before you ask. That kind of depth doesn't scale by adding more people to a support queue. Curation has to be somebody's actual job, with your name attached to it, not a ticket number.

I built The Founders Club because I was lonely as a founder, and nobody had my back in a way that felt personal. Solving that for 2,500 people can't just mean fast responses. It has to mean someone who actually knows you.

This one hits home in a way the others don't.

I've been the guy sitting in a job, watching a problem build under the surface, staying quiet because saying something felt harder than swallowing it. The frustration doesn't go away when you don't voice it. It just moves into every room, every conversation, until it's not frustration anymore. It's anxiety. And if you know anything about me or have been reading this for a while, your boy doesn’t do well with anxiety.

We're closing in on 50 employees now, and what I'm learning, faster than I'd like, is that people are quiet before they're loud. The silence is the signal.

As a leader, that's on me. It's my job to check in on my people, not just whether they're hitting numbers, but whether they're actually happy, challenged, and building the life they want for themselves. That's why we work, isn't it? Not for the KPI. For the life it's supposed to build.

I’m spending more time checking in and “managing” then I am “working” most days and ultimately I have to develop as a boss & leader to know that is simply just the natural direction these things go when the company gets big.

Without this team, The Founders Club doesn't exist, not the version we have today, not the version I want at 2,500 members. I've spent too much of my career acting like I built things alone. Showing up and working hard isn't enough for the people on my team, any more than it was enough for me. They have to feel involved, and acknowledged for what they're actually contributing, not just told "good job" in a Slack message once in a while. They're pouring their time into something with my name on it more than theirs. If I'm not making sure they're cared for, none of this holds up.

So I've started checking in more. Real one-on-ones, not status updates. Asking how people are doing outside of work. Making space in team meetings for wins that have nothing to do with revenue. I want this team here for good — not for the next round of growth, not until something better comes along. That means paying attention before the quiet turns into something loud.

I'm landing in New York City right now for four days of FC madness: a 100-person mastermind Wednesday, an executive offsite Thursday, a Whale Dinner that night for our $25M+ founders, and Founders Olympics Friday with 75-plus members. Little sleep, probably one of the best weeks I'll have all year.

I can't tell you how fulfilling it is to be building something like this for the once-upon-a-time lonely entrepreneur still in me.

If you're a seven figure founder and you haven't applied to the club yet, book an intro call. I'd love to meet you.

I appreciate you taking the time to keep reading these newsletters. If even one of you takes something away every time I hit send, I'm a happy man. If any of this landed, shoot me an email back. I’d love to respond on my flight home!

Talk soon,

Chris

Ps. Reply directly to this email. I’d love to hear from you. I read every single one.