Hey friends….

I’ve been struggling guys and it’s time to be honest with you. It may be the reason why I’ve been writing just a bit less than I want to. I miss the keyboard. I miss pouring my heart out. I miss waking up feeling inspired to hit the keyboard.

I never wanted to be this person. Never thought it would happen to me. But I think I’m going through a bit of an identity crisis post CROSSNET. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the exit, the peace of mind, knowing that I am onto the next chapter is amazing. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything in the world. But the fact that for the past eight years this game that I created was my identity. It was 90% of the content I wrote about. And now its gone.

The tips, tricks, lessons, disasters, expanding into retail, building a company from legit the last pennies I had to my name. It’s all I’ve known. It’s how I’ve made a living. Sharing those stories, helping the next person, helping the next Chris from Woodstock, Connecticut who wasn’t born with a silver spoon, a rich aunt or uncle, or born in a Loro Piana sweatsuit. 

The next chapter is clear for me and has been for a while. The Founders Club is all encompassing and has kept me on the road traveling for nearly two years straight. The business is growing rapidly, members are happier than ever but I am personally struggling on crafting the narrative. I’m no longer dropping tips on how to get into Costco, save money on packaging, increase your customer acquisition cost. I’m removed from the e-commerce business that I once loved and building something much greater and aligned with my goal and the reason I think I was put on Earth. 

But I’m finding it hard to share the stories. To create the tweets and the LinkedIn posts that resonate. To create paragraphs that make you want to keep reading to the next sentence. The good, the bad, the highs, the lows are all present in this business but they are hard to describe and share. And most of all, since 99% of you don’t run a community based business most of these struggles don’t resonate. 

Today I think it finally clicked. It doesn’t matter the reason you read this newsletter or what business you are in, we all want the same thing. A community. A place where our customers come together. A place where we feel less alone. A place where you get off the couch and go see your friends. Or hell, a place where your friends join you on the couch and watch endless Netflix shows. Belonging and finding your tribe is a basic necessity in life.

It’s time to pull back the curtain and show exactly how we are pulling off the magic and the majority of these things are universal to any business. 

Advice from the Team Offsite

I’m on a flight back home from Los Angeles at the end of a seven day road trip. It’s been an absolute sprint. Miami to Puerto Rico for a team offsite and then right out to LA for our biggest event ever and locking in our 750 person venue for Founders Forum.

This flight sucks I’ll be honest. Its like 5 hours of pure hell, but writing this actually makes it fly by and I can’t stop thinking about some of the things we did as a team this week that I wish we had done at CROSSNET or any of my other previous businesses.

First - I can’t suggest this, but every team member put two cities in a hat and we had a draft. The city had to be no more than an eight hour flight away from Miami. Last city standing wins and thats how we ended up in Puerto Rico.

We flew the entire executive team, nine of us in for a full three day jam session. When I say I’ve never worked more in my life I am not lying. Legit every day, at the kitchen table from 8AM to 9PM every single night. Sprinkled in with a few dips in the ocean and playing basketball on the rooftop court (low key flex).

There’s about 4-5 things I want to get into that I’m sure you can take away for your 2026 planning session. So let’s get into it.

1) Too many cooks in the kitchen! This should probably be like #4 or #5 on the list in order of importance but its top of mind so here we go at the top spot. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change anything for the world and it was to fly in 9 people (dont get mad at me if you’re reading this!) to go deep on the Founders Club mission, but in reality, we are a small company with sub 30 employees/contractors, why do we need 9 decision makers? As the founders, Aaron & I, need to do a better job of deciding who exactly needs to be at these 2026 planning meetings and keep the ship moving.

The goal as the founder is to set the vision and the rest of the team to fill in the gaps. Its nice to get everybody involved, but sometimes too many opinions are a bad thing. Plus we probably would have saved $25,000 on the trip. Less is more.

2) Radical candor. The best thing we have going for our team right now is 100% honesty. We live and die by this at the Founders Club. There are NO EGOS. Nobody is offended when we suggest ideas. Everybody is on the same team and everybody is okay with being wrong. We have one north star - does it make our community better and our members happier. If the answer is no and it effects them negatively, then we know the answer… even if it makes our life harder or more expense. The best idea does NOT need come from the founders and I challenge everyone to be more open to other ideas. HOWEVER you need to make sure you know exactly where you want to source your ideas and opinions from. It probably doesn’t make a ton of sense for your head of HR to be giving in the weeds sales or email marketing advice, so why bother?

3) Ruthless Honesty. My favorite part of the entire 72 hours was a moment towards the end of first night where everybody went around the room and said exactly what they were worried about or nervous about with the other individuals in the room and also how they personally need to improve. There were some super personal things shared, so I’ll drop a few:

• You are going to leave the company to get a better job offer

• I don’t think you are capable of actually doing this job

• You are too passive and wait for other people to make decisions for you

• I need to step up and be a more vocal leader and take charge within this organization instead of the other department head

• Why do you wait until you are drowning with work to hire and build out systems?

• I don’t think you are capable of hiring correctly or efficiently?

• Why do you always go back to hiring instead of making better systems or working harder?

• Are you afraid you are going to lose your job if we make your job more efficient and require less grueling man hours?

• If somebody offered to double your salary now would you leave us?

4) Personal Chefs Make Everything Better. If you’re planning an offsite, you just have to do this atleast once. Not once did we ever have to think about food, our schedule, or going hungry. We also probably all drank a gallon each of Celsius this week as well.

5) THE UGLY DECK. SEXY BUSINESS. Two weeks before any company offsite, everybody on the team gets a blank powerpoint slide that they are responsible for sending in three days before the offsite. You don’t get to see anybody elses slide, but you must complete ONE SLIDE and ONE SLIDE only with everything you want to talk about. The font can be size 4 if you want, but it needs to cover your goals, challenges, the direction you are going in and what you are going to present to the team. No sexy photos, colors, or transitions. Just pure raw honesty and communication. The slide should take you between 30-60 minutes to cover. You should try it, I think you’ll love it.

6) GIVE YOUR TEAM FULL AUTONOMY. We realized that half the team actually did not fully feel that they were fully in control of their leadership role. We run the company very open and honestly and thought we had made it crystal clear that the executives are in charge of their department and everything should be treated as a micro P&L. Apparently this message was not fully received and we needed to drill it in. We build out hiring budgets for every single department and now four members of our team are prepared to hire 5 different positions over the next few months. If you know somebody good for any of these let me know!

• Community Manager - Chicago - $50,000 (Responsible for member satisfaction for 250 members within The Founders Club community - connect members, help create events, book flights, do anything and everything to ensure happiness)

• Community Manager - Denver - $50,000

• Videographer/Photo - NYC, Vancouver, West Palm, Austin, Denver - $500/Evening - Include 20 Photos + One Reel

• Partnerships Lead - Remote - $50k Base w/ bonus - $70k OTE - Ensure our sponsors and partners of the club are fulfilled and happy. Outreach to the best of the best in each of our core cities to provide our members with exclusive offers they can’t receive anywhere else (eg. 25% off Equinox membership, discounted airline flights, private banking with JP Morgan).

• Events Associate - $45k Base - Entry level position for a self starter who enjoys throwing events. You’ll be under the supervision of our senior events manager.

I Found a Hiring Hack (Free $1000)

Speaking of hiring, not only is the entire team aligned on budgets and timelines for when the next five hires need to be made, but we’ve been finding some incredible executive assistants through a company called Oceans that I wanted to shout out.

To be honest, I’ve been juggling too much shit on my plate for way too long. Nonsense meetings, copy & paste follow up emails, calling my electric company when I forget to pay the bill, making reservations, and so much more. After selling CROSSNET, launching the pilates studios, and TFC being on a rocketship, Aaron called me out because I was dropping the ball everywhere. It was unacceptable and I had to man up.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working with an incredible executive assistant (shout out Perla) and suddenly I have 10-15 hours a week back to actually focus. I’m always the type of guy who is scared its going to take more time to train than to actually do the work in the first place. This is such a bad mindset to have and once I accepted that I needed to carve out the time for a little training, my entire life got SO MUCH BETTER.

The co-founder of Oceans, Austin Rief, has been a friend for a minute and sold his first company called Morning Brew a few years back. They actually served as a little bit of inspiration for this newsletter if I’m being honest.

Oceans helps founders unlock top tier global talent. Not only executive assistants, but also marketing specialists, finance pros, and operations managers. Every candidate (they call them Divers) is vetted for skill, experience, and culture fit. Oceans doesn’t just place someone in your system and move on. They support training, onboarding, and ongoing success so your new hire delivers real impact. Earlier today, I loaded up four of the five jobs into their platform to try to find help.

I don’t have time to interview a million candidates and the results speak for themselves with over 400 companies using them and hiring costs are typically reduced by 70-80% while getting USA caliber output.

Austin told me that he’d hook it up to all of my readers and The Founders Club members with $1000 of your first hire, and its good until the end of November. If you’ve been meaning to do this but putting it off, its time.

Snag a call here or let me know if you want a personal intro to their team!

Onward & Upward

I’m about to touch down and am SO EXCITED to be home in Miami until Thanksgiving. Three weeks at home these days is the biggest I think back to those three days in Puerto Rico, one thing sticks out: how much this team cares. Every person went all in and treats this business like its their own.

Its your job as the founder to identify the moment this feeling is off. When somebody is just cashing it in. Today’s problems are tomorrow’s problems and then next weeks.

We call this the clean shot.

The moment you recognize this, its your job to address it. Improve it or replace it. There’s no other option. Performance first. Culture second. That’s the standard.

Catch you on the flip side. Thanks for letting me be open!

Chris Meade