What's up friends?!

Eight days. That's all that's left until The Forum, the biggest event we’ve ever hosted and I genuinely cannot sleep.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that we rented out this venue called The COSM, and essentially made an entrepreneurship Coachella where 550+ of our members are flying in from all over the country for this destination type wedding event. Two years ago, Aaron and I were sitting in a room wondering if anyone would even show up if we threw an event like this. Now we’ve spent nearly $300,000 just for a one day event. One of the coolest parts is that we’re not even losing money doing it! Insane that brands like Delta, Google, and UBS are along for the ride.

To be honest, it's not the logistics that get me emotional. It's the conversations I know are about to happen. The two founders who are going to meet and end up building a business together. The person who flies in feeling stuck and flies home with a completely different perspective. The late night hangs that turn into lifelong friendships. I've seen it happen at every single event we've thrown, and this one is going to be on a different level entirely.

This is the biggest moment of my career. And I mean that. So naturally, the thing I want to do is get my mind off of it and tell you a little bit about what I’ve been doing to make my life so much easier and my work so much more efficient. A step by step mini-breakdown on AI that should 100% be easy to pick up by a dude explaining it who is absolutely not technical.

Bear with me. The guy who went to school for film, never took a business class, and spent eight years selling volleyball nets is about to teach you something about artificial intelligence. To be honest, I resisted this stuff longer than I'd like to admit. I thought it was overhyped. I thought it was for tech people. I was wrong, and I'm a little embarrassed it took me this long to figure it out. Now I want to teach it to my mom, scream it by the rooftops, because every day I’m not using it is a day that goes by that you’re missing out.

So lets get to it. When you're growing fast, hiring feels exciting. New people, new energy, new momentum. It’s just the “logical thing to grow.”

What nobody tells you is that before you hire a single person, you have to answer a question that most founders completely skip: Can I actually afford this person? AND what happens if revenue drops or increases by 25% for a few consecutive months?

Not "does this seem like a good idea" afford. Not "revenue is up so why not" afford. I mean: does the P&L actually support this hire at this moment in time, and if so, at what salary?

To be honest, I used to 100% guess. Gut feel. Vibes. Hope it worked out. Normally it did, sometimes it absolutely blew up in my face.

That's how you end up with payroll you can't sustain six months later and have the world's worst conversation with someone you genuinely like. Or worse, you’re staring down the barrel of a personal guarantee loan that you can’t pay back and you’ve been spending it on hires that you can’t afford (Chris in 2021 lololololool)

Two weeks ago I made the switch from ChatGPT to Claude for more complex business type things. ChatGPT is still great for things like “I’m constipated what should I do?” or “Who are the top 3 scorers in Knicks history”, but for actual work, hiring and even constructing ideas for this newsletter Claude is the way to go.

The first thing I did was figure out how to actually give it context about my world, who I am, how I think so it would stop giving me generic answers.

Here's what I did. I went into ChatGPT, which already had months of my conversations in it, and I asked it to create something called a markdown file. Basically a structured document that captured everything it knew about The Founders Club, everything it knew about me, and everything it knew about my team. Revenue, margins, org structure, goals, the whole thing. Then I dropped that file into Claude.

From that point on, Claude wasn't just a smart AI. It was a smart AI that actually knew me down to the core. It’s 100% weird as fuck, I won’t lie. But there is no ignoring this is where the world is going and avoiding its adaption is just plain stupid in my opinion.

Once I uploaded all the documentation, I then continued to drill it with questions like “what else do you need to know about me?” or “if there’s any more information you’d like to have about this decision, what would it be?”

I found this to be the perfect prompt to give it enough clarity to map out exactly what I could afford when it came to new hires, the best part is I didn't have to explain anything from scratch. I just asked the question. It had all the data and information to make logical conclusions on its own.

It took about 20 minutes. What would have taken me two weeks of back and forth with our finance team, three messy spreadsheets, and a lot of "I think we can swing it" energy was done.

The output wasn't perfect. I had to refine it, push back on some assumptions, add context it didn't have. But it gave me a starting point that was grounded in actual numbers, not wishful thinking.

Now I know exactly what I can afford but it also gave me some damn good ideas on what exactly the roles should be, the order I hire them in, where I can best find these people and the job descriptions to post on Linkedin.

The coolest part is that this works for almost every business task, it even helped refine this newsletter and punch up the parts that felt lazy or flat.

Okay, second part. And this one might be even more useful for most of you and takes 20 SECONDS. DO THIS. I wish I was getting paid for it. They owe me alot of $ for how many people I’ve told in the past two weeks.

There's a tool called Wispr Flow. You download it to your computer and program it to one of your keys like Option or Command and when you hit it, you simply talk to your computer and it writes down everything perfectly as you said it. Even if you ramble, if you mess up, if you say something and take it back, it catches everything. This entire newsletter was written with Wispr in a FRACTION of what it normally takes me. The best part it works for everywhere: emails, Slack, documents, Claude itself.

Here's how I use it: instead of typing, I just talk. That's it.

I'll be walking around my apartment in the morning, or sitting in the sauna, and I'll have a thought about something I need to handle. Instead of trying to remember it, or sitting down to type out a long email, I just speak it. Wispr transcribes it in real time, cleans it up, and puts it wherever my cursor is.

My average email response time has probably been cut in half. My Slack messages are actually coherent now instead of the half-typed disasters I used to send. And when I'm using Claude, I don't sit there typing out a big long prompt. I just talk to it.

The combination of the two is kind of absurd. I'll be pacing around thinking out loud about a problem, and by the time I sit down, there's already a fully formed thought ready to go into Claude, and Claude gives me back something I can actually use.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this has given me multiple hours back every week.

It was also a huge week in the Meade household this week. I've officially moved all of my personal and business wealth into UBS.

And look, I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but it was time for me. Every time time I'd get paid, I'd sit there and think what the hell do I actually do with this money? Do I buy Bitcoin? An investment? Save it in cash? Buy gold? Am I smart enough to make the decision? Is the person giving me the advice even doing the right thing or care enough?

I graduated Quinnipiac University with a film degree. I never took a business or finance class in my entire life. I've been figuring out this entrepreneurship thing completely on the fly for the better part of a decade.

To finally have experts who I trust, who have my best interest in mind, and who treat my finances like an actual business, is long, long, long overdue.

And it's not just investing. They're going to help me access capital for more BODY Hot Pilates studio locations, which, more on that soon. That kind of access is something I wish I had during the CROSSNET days when I was scrambling to fund inventory and praying the cash flow held together long enough to keep the lights on.

So regardless of whether you use UBS, JP Morgan, or someone else entirely, I could not encourage you more to get serious about financial planning. It is never too early. The peace of mind alone is worth it.

If you need the hook up my guy Alexander Carver deserves all the love in the world for just being A+++ at his job - [email protected] (has no idea I’m sending this, so just let him know if you do hit him up).

I know most of you feel like you’re behind on AI. I am too. You’re not alone. But ignoring it, doesn’t let it go away.

Here's the thing. I am probably the last person who should be your AI guy. I went to school for film. My first job was as a janitor. I learned e-commerce by accident. And for the longest time I looked at people talking about AI and thought, that's not for me. To be honest, I think I was just intimidated. But if I can figure this out while running two businesses and being off the clock by 6pm, you can figure it out too.

This is just about getting more done, with more clarity, in less time. Which, if you're like me and you stop working at 6pm no matter what to spend time with my family it becomes pretty important.

So here's what I'd recommend. Start with one thing this week. Just one.

Download Wispr. Download Claude. Calendar out some time to actually use the tools.

It will change your life and make you better at your job no matter what industry you are in. I hope this helps and I’d love to hear back from you if you have any tools that have been helpful for you.

I hope yall have the best week of your life. I’m fully locked in until The Forum.

Thanks for reading <3

Chris