Happy Monday!

I hope you had an amazing weekend. F1 was in full effect here in Miami, so it's one of those times where FOMO creeps in and you actually feel like an idiot for not getting off your couch and participating in some festives.

Writing this a little slugging this morning after going to a rave last night for some guy named Dom Dolla until 2AM under the 95-North bridge. Happy wife, happy life they say!

Moments like last night seeing Lyndsey so incredibly happy dancing and just feeling like a kid again are really what life is all about. All the money in the world can’t buy you love, happiness, and the feeling of knowing when enough is truly enough. Work to live, not live to work.

Today I’m going to be diving deep into a lesson almost every entrepreneur sadly just needs to learn the hard way. It’s easy to read about financial lessons and mishaps through newsletters and podcasts, it’s another when these troubles rock you in the face and you feel like your world is collapsing. Your chest is caving in. The business is going to fall apart. Nobody else understands you. Those are the moments only you and I understand.

Those experiences are invaluable as they make us rock solid.

So as I sit here on this lovely Monday May morning I am thinking of a season while building CROSSNET that I think the majority of readers can relate with.

The feeling when business seems to be rocking, things are going amazing, but for whatever reason I can NEVER pay myself. All this work, for no reward? What gives?!

Suddenly, the reality hit me: We were profitable on paper, but cash poor.

Let me be really clear: Profit does not equal cash.

Sadly it took getting burned to fully understand that.

Why Most Founders Get This Wrong

You’re not alone if you’ve made this mistake. I talk to founders all the time who say things like:

“We’re profitable! But I can’t pay my Amex bill this month.”
“We hit 7 figures, but I’m scared to hire because there’s nothing in the bank.”
“We’ve got great LTV, but I can’t afford inventory for next month.”

These aren’t rare problems. They’re common. And they usually come down to one core misunderstanding: Revenue is not cash. Profit is not cash. Growth does not mean health. Your P&L can lie to you. Your Stripe dashboard can hype you up.

But if your bank account doesn’t match your ambition, you’ve got a cash flow problem.

What We Did Wrong (And What I’d Do Differently Today)

When CROSSNET first took off, we were lean. Just Greg, Mike, and I, sprinting 24/7. We were profitable because we had to be. No fluff. No unnecessary spending. Every dollar was strategic.

But as sales started to climb, and I’m talking seven-figure months, we did what a lot of founders do: We started spending as if that cash was already ours. Scaled ads out of control, hired anybody we talked to, upgraded tools, warehouses, and bought anything we thought would help the business.

Locked in a big inventory order (with upfront deposits). All of it made sense on paper.

But when those retail payouts took longer than expected, sales started to slow down, or our ads screeched to a halt while all our cash was tied up in inventory we realized our “profitable” business was running on fumes. That moment changed how I think about money forever.

The One Hire I Wish I Actually Made

Look, I know I just bashed making a ton of hires and scaling too fast in the first couple hundred words of this newsletter. But, there are real exceptions.

Take a hard look in the mirror. Ask yourself, are you the finance guy? Do you actually know your true daily profit? Your cash needs for the next few months? What you can actually do for your business and what you need to avoid?

It takes a certain skill to be ruthfully blunt. Numbers don’t lie. Either you can afford this or you can’t. And if you do spend on this you are going to be up for a rude awakening a few months from now. Everybody needs a killer like this on their team. Whether it’s full time or to start fractional. Having somebody set up these guardrails is exactly what you need and how the best brands seem to go from 6 figures to 8 overnight.

One of my favorite Founders Club members, Rich Zhou, actually made an entire career of this gap in the market with his company Aquifer. He realized that most businesses can’t afford a full time CFO (trust me… we tried) and most are juggling 26 different Google Sheets hoping for the best.

Although I didn’t have him for CROSSNET (I wish I knew him then), he’s now starting to roll out clear dashboards, product level profitability, and strategic insights for The Founders Club on a weekly basis and it’s crushing.

I wanted to give Rich a shout out because he is a Founders Club legend and what he’s building with Aquifer needs to be known. The real time burn and runway reports have been a game changer and if you’re growing (or planning to), this is one of those no-brainer upgrades.

Send Rich a message at [email protected] or check out Aquifer here.

You’re gonna thank me later. Getting ahead on things like this will never leave you worse off.

The Cashflow Metrics You Need to Know (But Might Not)

Nobody teaches you this stuff in school. And truthfully, unless you’ve had an operator’s seat at a fast-scaling brand, you probably don’t know it either. Here are a few things I wish I had locked down way earlier:

Cash Conversion Cycle

How fast do you turn a dollar spent into a dollar received? Shorter = healthier. Long = you’re floating your own business.

Burn vs. Runway

How much cash are you spending each month? And how many months of runway do you have left at that burn rate?

Product-Level Profitability

Which SKUs are making you money? Which ones are dragging margins down? Most founders have no idea until it’s too late.

Working Capital

What’s your real-time liquidity? Can you cover your commitments this month without hoping a payout hits?

The Founder Finance Shift: From Reactive to Strategic

Here’s the thing that changed everything for me:

I stopped looking at the P&L and started asking better questions.

Where are we over-investing?
What does our worst-case scenario look like?

• Do we have real-time numbers, or just estimates?

• What happens if we hit a cash crunch next month? And more importantly: Do we have someone owning this, or am I guessing?

Early on, it was all on me. But as we grew, that wasn’t sustainable. What we needed wasn’t a bookkeeper. We needed a finance stack.

How to Avoid What We Went Through

Let me save you a few months of stress (and a few hundred thousand dollars in mistakes):

Get Clear on Cash Monthly. Make it a habit. Not quarterly. Not “when things slow down.” Every. Single. Month.

Run Forecasts, Not Just Reports. Your P&L shows the past. Your forecast lets you plan the future. Start scenario planning now.

Understand Unit Economics Cold. If you don’t know your margin by SKU, fix that yesterday.

Start Acting Like a CFO. Even if you don’t have one. Set up dashboards. Track KPIs. Ask better questions.

Or, you can just hire someone who lives and breathes this stuff.

Final Thought: Cash is King, But Clarity is the Throne

The wildest part? We weren’t even in trouble when our cash problems showed up. We were growing. Winning. Getting press. Landing shelf space. And that’s the lesson:

Cash flow issues don’t show up when you’re broke. They show up when you’re scaling, and you don’t have systems in place to support it.

So take this as your reminder:

Get ahead of your numbers before they get ahead of you.

You’ll sleep better,

You’ll scale smarter,

And you won’t need to write a newsletter like this from your garage, staring at a missed opportunity.

Until next time,
Chris