We will get into the subject line in a second!

First and foremost, It’s FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND BABYYYY!

I’m a New England kid, we romanticize the summer. The idea of closing your laptop. Being out on the water with your best friends. And not giving a single shit about whats in your email inbox cause those problems can wait until Monday.

The best part is my hometown best friends are flying down from Connecticut and I haven’t seen them in almost six months. Better yet, we haven’t had a boys weekend in well over a year, so its long overdue. If you have any new or rare Miami suggestions that I should get into fire them off, already have the overpriced Soho House cabana and a boat lined up …. just wait til Monday’s email from me bitching about it all getting cancelled due to rain.

Works been crazy lately. Tons of travel. The most members we’ve ever had apply and join The Founders Club in a single month. But I was telling my family the other night, the coolest thing is starting to happen.

I finally, in the first time in my life, feel like the business is in a position that if I got fired or fell off a cliff, we would be okay.

It’s a weird feeling. On one hand you want to feel “irreplaceable”, but on the other end, the entire point of building a team is so you can get out of the day to day and focus on the big picture. The one or two boulders you can push forward each quarter that actually make a difference.

Speaking of boulders, getting the ceiling up at our second studio in Coral Gables, is by far one of biggest boulders we are working on currently. If you’ve renovated a retail space, the ceiling is by far one of the biggest headaches and most expense parts of the project.

For our pilates studio we inherited a space that had typical office popcorn ceilings. Sadly not the aesthetic that we are going for at BODY and required us to rip out the ceiling and grid, demo the old ceiling, and sheetrock the entire ceiling. The entire two week project also runs around $25,000 and I already know he probably forgot to connect the BOSE speakers he put in the ceiling, so that will be a whole other headache for next week.

Going on Year 10

So I started this email out by saying that I just got fired. That’s not EXACTLY true. Let me explain.

A lot of founders say they want freedom.

But what they actually build is a prison.

The truth is, running your own company doesn’t automatically make you free. 

In fact, in the early years of CROSSNET and The Founders Club, I was less free than I’d ever been in my life. Working around the club. Taking nonstop requests. Doing anything and everything to help & please my employees.

I was an enabler.

Every time a net didn’t arrive on time, I was the one answering customer emails at 11pm.

Every time we got a big order from a new retailer, I was the one calling freight partners and coordinating logistics.

Even when I was on “vacation,” my phone was basically a grenade: one Slack notification away from blowing up my day.

Yeah, I owned the company. But it definitely owned me too. Have you ever felt like that?

If I’m being brutally honest, I failed at CROSSNET to build these systems. I was the kid in highschool who wanted to do the entire class project because he thought his classmates were idiots and had to get the A+.

It wasn’t until we built Founders Club and brought in a team of seasoned veterans that I learned that you actually get a lot more work done by spending all your time building up your team and championing them to hit their goals.

Hell, our Chief Marketing Officer, one of the seasoned veterans I just mentioned LIVES on a track pad and takes 99% of his calls walking around his neighborhood, but the marketing team has never been more dialed and Founders Club has never been more relevant.

It wasn’t until a last year that I really realized: You haven’t built a real business until you’ve built one that doesn’t need you.

That’s what I call operational independence.

I think I’m close to being fired.

Start With The 30-Day Test

If you want to take this week’s newsletter serious, now is no better point. We have a few days off. There’s time for some serious reflection.

If you walked away for 30 days, what would break? What would slow down? What would flat-out stop?

If your answer is: “Pretty much everything,” then congratulations. 

You’re not alone. But we have a ton of work to do.

It’s humbling to realize the biggest thing holding your company back might be you.

But that 30-day test? That’s not just a thought exercise. It’s your roadmap.

Whatever would break if you left, that’s what you need to systematize, delegate, or delete.

Your business should be able to operate, and make money, without you in the building. 

If it can’t, you’ve got a job, not a company.

PS. Some advice from somebody who has been there before -

You CAN’T DELEGATE everything over night. Prioritize the 1-2 most important things and work your way down the list every few months. I feel like earlier Chris failed at delegation because I did everything at once and then checked back 30 days later to find the business was way worse than it was when I handed things off and then was like “oh shit I’m better off just doing everything.”

Create Systems So You Don’t Have to Remember

Ever heard of an SOP? My life is just one big one at this point.

Here’s my golden rule. If I do something more than 3 times, I document it.

Take the time, slow down, drop it into ChatGPT and build out a process that you can send to the team.

Your business can’t run on your memory, your energy and your presence. If it does, then you’re setting yourself up for a business that runs on everything that is in your head.

Systems = Freedom

Your employees shouldn’t have access to you all the time. So here’s what I do for all hand off situations:

• Create a clear SOP via ChatGPT (this is a one-two page clear PDF)

• Create a Loom video walk through explaining exactly what you want done

• All documentation lives in Notion for our employees to access

• There is clear accountability of who owns what

• The definition of a job being completed
  

It’s boring. But it’s essential.

You don’t scale by working more. You scale by teaching others how to do what you do and then getting the hell out of their way.

Interview Mark Cuban Next Week?

I’ve now been typing for two hours and its time to actually get some work done. I have about 2000 more words I’m going to drop on this topic next week because its never been more important.

Before I sign off, I have some crazy news that I want to potentially invite you to.

We landed Mark Cuban to do a live Q&A with The Founders Club next Wednesday at 3PM EST. This is 100% for club members only but I want to make room for one newsletter reader who has been interested in learning more about what we do behind the scenes.

If interested in joining the call and asking Mark a question, shoot me a response back with a little bit about yourself and what you’d ask him.

I hope you guys have the most incredible holiday weekend!

Try to take some time for yourself.

All the best,

Chris