What’s up friends?!

The weather is officially changing and it’s the best time to be in Miami. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written last but let me tell you I’ve been locked in.

I signed up for the Miami marathon, cancelled almost every meeting I had on my calendar, and decided to go all in on blowing up and remaking our entire partnerships program at The Founders Club. This meant throwing out everything I knew to be true over the past 24 months and rewriting the entire book. The best thing is while I’ve been onboarding our new Head of Partnerships, she has helped me rewire all my thinking. So many dumb principles that I thought were true. So many ways I was running the business in a dumb way. Sometimes you just need somebody to come in with a fresh perspective or as we call it a “clean shot” and tell you how it actually is.

Its 11:52AM and I’m currently writing from the Harbour Club. It’s a members only club that we unlocked for all of our Miami members. The place is incredible. A+ food. Quiet. Great for co-working and I’m staring down at what has become my favorite tool for planning out my year, The Big Ass Calendar made famous by Jesse Itzler, one of my favorite entrepreneurs on the planet.

Essentially its a literal 4-foot wall calendar, where every single month of the year is visible at once. We’ve just finished planning 150+ events over the next 365 days and its very clear to see where there are gaps, where we are underserving the community, and where I know I’m going to be 100% exhausted and risk burning out.

After two plus years of traveling the world, sleeping in hotel beds more than I’d like to admit and being away from my family, I’ve learned the hard way. The founders who actually crush the hardest aren't the ones who work harder in the moment; they're the ones who planned better six months ago.

Let me explain.

100 vs 25MPH

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve lived the past half decade of my life in permanent reaction mode. Wake up. Go 100 miles per hour. Hope I don’t burn out.

It’s worked… I guess.

But I constantly feel like I can never truly get ahead, because I NEVER STOP to breathe, slow down, and plan. Who else feels the same way?

Something breaks, they fix it. A new opportunity pops up, they chase it. It feels like momentum and the “hustle” that makes you feel good about the way that things are going. But it's not. It's just chaos.

For the first time in my life with this new partnerships hire and rebuilding the entire organization, I feel like I am doing the “adult thing” and slowing things down to build the infrastructure. To be honest, I don’t know how I got here. If I’m giving advice, I need to give myself a gut check first and ask myself am I able to “slow down” BECAUSE the other parts of the business are going so incredibly well and I went guns blazing for two years? OR could have I actually slowed down the entire time and maybe even the other parts of my business that are doing well, would be doing even better.

I think the truth is somewhere in between.

From what I’ve seen, the brands that crush Q4 aren't the ones working harder in November. They're the ones who planned better in the summer. The ones who barely survive are the ones who thought they could "figure it out" when it mattered most.

You can't.

How to Actually Use a Planning System

Chris Meade in 2025 is like Elon Musk, compared to Chris Meade in 2020. The way I’m thinking about the business, planning, the team and goals are 100% different and for the best.

Before you “manifest” 2026, I would challenge you to have this open dialogue aka a mastermind with yourself or your executive team. We just did it in Puerto Rico with our exec team and then again with our admissions team in Tampa and it was not only eye opening, but led to even more buy in for what we’re build and motivation.

1) What is the biggest thing you are scared about with our company? Anything that keeps you up at night?

2) Where do you have the most fun within the business?

3) Is there anybody on the team that you don’t believe will be with us in the next 6 months? Why?

4) Where do you think we are failing short right now?

5) What is one hard conversation you are putting off right now?

These conversations should be scary. Vulnerable. Emotional. Hell, in both of the sessions we had over the past month I actually cried. I really give a fuck. The business is a big part of my life and to be honest is my one chance at “generational wealth” and early retirement. I can’t destroy it. I want this more than ever.

We had a saying at Uber, “Be an owner, not a renter.” It was annoying as hell to hear as an employee, but now in the driver seat I understand why that mentality is so important.

Next up is goal planning:

1) Start with your biggest goals for the year. Not 47 goals. Three to five max. Think revenue, think profit, think total customers.

For us in 2025, it was:

• Launch six core chapters, while going very deep in Miami & NYC

• Cross 500 members without sacrificing quality

• Make sure every member feels like they got 10x worth of value

• Host 75+ events

• Throw our first ever conference

From there, we worked backwards.

Were we adequately staffed? Did we have the runway? Were we spending ad dollars in the right place? Did we even have the right team to make half the shift we wanted to happen, happen? Most importantly, what WEEKLY REVENUE & PROFIT number do we need to hit in order to make our plans come true.

We then tracked that every single week for the last 45+ weeks.

You bet your ass we hit ALL OUR GOALS AND MORE.

The goals were ambitious as hell when we set them twelve months ago, but we crushed them by 200%. Only because we prepared, tracked, and set the tempo every single week.

It’s ridiculous to type, but running a business and sticking to the plan is like a diet. Its cool to say you’re not going to eat like shit or cave in for that chocolate, but if nobody is holding you accountable how likely is it you are going to stay on track?

It's not sexy, it’s tedious as hell, but it works. When you know what's six months out, you stop reacting to what's in front of you. You start building toward something bigger.

Klaviyo: What Helped Us Scale CROSSNET to Millions

2026 is the year that Founders Club starts to partner with the LARGEST brands in the world. These will be badges of honor that these brands want to work with us.

We just unlocked our first one and its Klaviyo, the best email marketing software in the world.

We used them for 5+ years when scaling CROSSNET from a pipe dream to $40M+ in revenue. They were the backbone when it came to email & sms marketing. I won’t lie, we tried every other alternative before it and even left a few times to try to test the “cheaper” option and always came back.

The reason is simple, it was the first time our email, SMS, and data lived in one place that actually made sense. We had full ownership of our customer data and the ability to speak directly to our community. While shipping emails that were beyond sexy and having record days at the push of our fingers with SMS.

Most marketing platforms were built for enterprise teams with giant budgets and teams of analysts. Klaviyo was built by founders who’ve been in the trenches, and who know what it’s like to scale from zero to something very substantial.

Their platform gets better every year. Real-time personalization that drives actual ROI, and insights that help you build relationships at scale, not just send more emails for the sake of doing so. One of the #1 things you need to do by the end of this year is make a list of all the softwares you are spending money on. You can probably delete half of them and the money will go straight to the bottom line. Speaking from personal experience the one you should continue to invest in is email marketing and going with Klaviyo. It is dumbfounding how many founders aren’t using it and how email marketing can be applied to every business.

If you’re serious about growing your business and owning your audience, this is the platform I’d go with.

Start using Klaviyo today and unlock your next stage of growth.

Book a chat with a Klaviyo Partner who works with founders like us, they’ll even send you a free Comfrt hoodie (the comfiest hoodie ever) for your time. Pretty dope.

What This Means for You

If you're reading this and thinking, "I don't have time to plan. I'm barely keeping up with what's in front of me," I hear you.

The reality is, that's exactly why you need to plan.

The reason you're buried isn't because you're not working hard enough. It's because you're reacting to everything instead of designing your next six months.

So here's what I'd recommend:

Block 120 minutes this week. Get out of your inbox. Turn off Slack.

Grab a whiteboard, a big piece of paper, or yeah, a Big Ass Calendar if you want to go all in. And map out the next six months.

What are your biggest goals? What needs to happen in Q1 to make Q2 work? What can you do now to set yourself up for a killer Q4?

Don't overthink it. Just get it out of your head and onto something you can see. Once it's visible, you can build around it. You can delegate it. You can stress-test it. And most importantly, you can stop wondering if you're on track. You'll know.

Final Thought

Planning isn’t sexy but it has helped us protect and plan for what matters and continues to matter most. It helped us say no to things that didn't align with where we were going. It helped us build margin into our timelines so we weren't scrambling at the last second. And it helped us show up for our team, our members, and our families without burning out. The goal was never to do more, it was to do the right things, at the right time, with the right people.

That's what planning gives you. Not perfection or certainty, those things never come.

In a world where most founders are drowning in noise, clarity is the ultimate competitive advantage. So if you're tired of reacting and last-second-scrambling making you feel like you're always six steps behind, maybe it's time to plan better.

Not someday. This week.

Map it out, build the timeline, and work backwards from the outcome you want. 

Once that’s laid out, the only thing left is to execute like hell.

Talk soon,

Chris