I Just Launched a Pilates Studio

Damn, it feels like its been an entire month packed into just the first five days of February. I’m coming up for air now after essentially working 16 hour days for the past week. If you haven’t seen, I officially opened a heated mat pilates studio with my wife this weekend called BODY. It’s in a beautiful part of Aventura, Miami and its essentially been her dream since the day I met her.

Seven years ago when I met her she decided to leave her corporate job to help me start CROSSNET and become employee #1. She had blind faith in me for some reason, even in the early days when we were lucky if we did 1-2 sales a week. But she stuck with me, rode it out and helped me and the founding team build it into one of the most popular backyard games in the country. I was legit living on unemployment at the time, but she left her corporate job, her dreams of becoming a Fortune 500 CMO, and risked it all for me.

It’s so cool to be able to return the favor and help her launch her very own Pilates studio, which is going to be an ABSOLUTE MONSTER. The coolest part is that she’s doing it with her best friend, who also happens to own seven studios called Reforming Pilates (if you’re in South Florida or NYC, check them out). So, we are inheriting an incredible customer base and the blueprint for some success.

I now just get to apply my marketing chops to it when it comes to email marketing, SMS, events, collabs, and just ensuring we squeak out as many profit dollars possible every single day.

__________________________________

Content is King

As we launched this week and the stress piled up a huge win actually happened. I got back to posting on Twitter & LinkedIn freely. The past few months of creating content have felt like a chore if I’m being honest. Posting because people expect me to, not because it was fun. It lost its sparkle.

But then I was reminded by a good friend that the most important thing you can do is just be yourself. Share your story. That’s the one thing you are better at than anybody in the world. Nobody can tell Chris Meade’s story better than Chris Meade. So I better go out there and do it.

So I just started shooting from the hip again, and what do you know, the results just started piling up.

• Just crossed 30,000 followers on LinkedIn

• This tweet below just crossed half a million views

• The first week of classes has been nearly sold out

• We had more applications this week for The Founders Club than any other week in company history

• Got asked to come on one of the biggest business podcasts in the country

The best thing about starting a brand new company from scratch as a second-time entrepreneur is that you get to avoid all the stupid mistakes you made the first time. The dumbass overspending. The stupid photo and video shoots you think you need. The expensive website. The expensive hires. And my personal least favorite one, not having my finances in order and just coasting month to month, hoping there’s more in the bank account than last month.

We’ve all been here. Maybe you’re even there now.

Whether you’re running a business. Starting to do freelance work on the side. Or for some lucky reason, money simply flows to you. You need to track every dollar that comes in and out of your account. Accurate books will make your life easier and there’s nothing worse than a shitty bookkeeper.

If your current bookkeeper is always late, lacks communication, or you’re just not satisfied, I’ve got a great referral for you. I’ve now used these guys for my past three companies and BODY started with them last week.

I’ve shouted them out a few times, but they are actually the reason I got into entrepreneurship in the first place. My college fraternity brothers, Nathan Hirsch & Connor Gillivan, got me into Amazon dropshipping when I was 18 and the rest is history. They ended up exiting a large business a few years back and started this incredible bookkeeping service to help entrepreneurs get accurate books, on time.

They handle everything from complex e-commerce bookkeeping, personal LLC’s (like Chris Meade LLC), and agency startups.

I know you’re probably scrambling, so I begged them to give all my readers and The Founders Club community two months for free. Give Nate a shout at [email protected] or visit their site at ecombalance.com. Just tell them I sent you!

__________________________________

Come Hang?

The name of the game in 2025 is community. More connections. More engagement. More leveling up. We are legit going everywhere and anywhere to build a community of the country’s best entrepreneurs.

Next up this February:

• Denver

• NYC

• Phoenix

Free to stop by any/all of the above, would love to see you there. If you can’t make it, no sweat, we’ve got events coming left-and-right throughout the rest of 2025. Stay tuned.

______________________________________________________________________

Onward & Upward

Really grateful for all that is going on right now. Not to beat a dead horse, but getting to exist in all of this chaos day-in and day-out with all of my best friends is a blessing that I’ll never take for granted.

Getting to grow this newsletter + share on Twitter throughout this whole process, “building in public” as some might call it, has been more rewarding than I ever could’ve asked for.

Speaking of best friends…

When I sent out the first edition of this three years ago it was just a massive email with tips and tricks of things I wish 25 year old Chris knew about the world of running a business. Now its transformed into a real-life community called The Founders Club.

What started out as a passion project snowballed into a community where 250+ ambitious founders from 15 cities, generating over $10 billion in revenue, come together to push each other to new heights. That’s exactly what The Founders Club is — a private, invite-only network of high-growth entrepreneurs who are all about scaling, building, and succeeding.

Whether you're looking for tactical advice, meaningful connections, or a group of people who truly get what it takes to run a business, this is the place to be.

We’re receiving nearly 100 applications a week and pride ourselves on having less than a 18% acceptance rate.

If you want to surround yourself with A+ players who are stoked to help each-other level up, learn more about The Founders Club here.

Grateful for you as always, I’m looking forward to the rest of today, then finally getting to catch up on all the sleep I didn’t get this week. A labor of love nonetheless.

Talk soon,

Chris

Ps. If you’re in Miami, I’d love to give you your first class at BODY for free!