Trapped in Mexico with 50 Founders

It’s Monday at 7:48AM and I’m back at my desk writing, recharged, and the most excited I’ve been in a long time to dive into some deep work. The past week of my life has been tough, I won’t begin to lie.

Last Monday I brought my dog into an emergency neurological clinic to have an MRI and a spinal surgery on what we thought was a slipped disk (called IVDD in dogs). What we were hoping was going to be a routine surgery and a few weeks of recovery, led to the discovery that his spine was fine, but instead, he had a tumor growing inside his spinal cord compressing his spine. We then rushed him into a cancer clinic on my birthday last week to get a diagnosis and treatment plan to save my best friend’s life.

Today at 1PM we start a week-long extensive sprint of radiation treatment that should kill and shrink the tumor. Sosa will go under three times, Monday-Wednesday-Friday and hopefully will make a full recovery by Christmas time. Thank god I’ve sold a lot of CROSSNETS this holiday season because this has been the most expensive medical procedure I’ve ever experienced.

After I got clarity on the hysteria above and we locked in a treatment plan, I jumped on the next flight down to Cancun, Mexico to head to our inaugural Founders Club - Mind, Body, Business Retreat. If you’ve been living under a rock or just starting to read this newsletter, I’ve been organizing and planning a 50 person founder retreat at a 5 star resort in Tulum for the past six months. This was our SUPER BOWL this year and it killed me to miss the first day of action; I’m beyond grateful for an incredible team, especially after this entire situation.

So where do I begin? I just spent 48 hours with 50 founders who flew in from all across the world. We had guest speakers from Dubai, 15 people fly in on the same plane from Toronto, the legendary founder of Mid-Day Squares, and some legends who have sold or are operating businesses doing $200M+ annually.

I’ll get into some of my favorite takeaways in a few but honestly, my biggest one was despite your financial success everyone is dealing with something. There’s no level of “wealth” or “success” that takes away stress of being a dad, a husband, balancing trying to support your family and pouring everything into their work. Throughout the sessions we really got to know people and as they opened their hearts up about what they are dealing with it just reemphasized the person I want to be and the life I want to live.

I am always going to choose my family over work. No amount of money is worth losing my family and the ones I love. Work to make every day feel like the weekend, not work to have money to have expensive shit to impress people who don’t care about you. And if that means I don’t work 90 hours a week to live in a $30M house I am completely cool with that. I’ll take being at every one of my kid’s soccer games and knowing their teacher’s names. And I guess that’s growing up.

Find out what’s important to you and go after it.

This weekend we discovered our whys.

If you can’t read this crumbled piece of paper it says:

Stepping out of this weekend, I’ve come to realize your why is the MOST important thing in life. Everything you do should be connected to that why. Taking this job. Working with that person. Going on that trip. Spending 12 hours locked in the office. Making that investment. Taking that risk. Cutting off that friendship. All back to that why. If it doesn’t align to that then its a hell no.

The crazy thing about life is that everybody went to Tulum for a different reason. Some people wanted clarity on 2025. Some people wanted to figure out to balance work vs family life. Some people were isolated in their hometowns and wanted to just meet others. One thing I know we all left walking away with is that our limiting beliefs are bullshit. No matter how successful you are, we all have these objections in our head that get us down or stop us from getting what we want.

These were mine that I wrote down on that piece of paper:

• Nothing ever ends up actually working out

• Don’t get too comfortable something always goes wrong

• I can’t actually accomplish the BIG DREAM

This year is about putting in the work to squash these beliefs. They are damaging. They are fake. They are holding me back. How am I going to grow The Founders Club to 500 members next year if I can’t even fully believe in myself? How am I going to successfully launch CROSSNET into Target if nothing “ever actually works out.”

This type of self-talk is catastrophic and stopping you from hitting your goals. Believe me, they’ve held me back a million times over, but now its time to do the work because I know by this time next year I’ll have a whole new set of limiting beliefs.

If you want to do the work with me and join me for our 2025 goal setting workshop then just send me a reply back. I’ll have an official sign up link this week but just by responding will get you added to the early sign up list. We did this last year and over 350 people joined!

So for those of you who didn’t make the trip to Tulum (roughly the 50,000 of you reading this) I just wanted to share some of my biggest quick takeaways.

• You are not posting enough. Don’t get overwhelmed pick a platform that you want to dedicate to growing on and do it. Not once a week. Not once a day. Find a cadence that works but you need to post more.

• Everything you do should be measurable. If you’re going to take my advice to post more then you need to be tracking the numbers behind the scenes. Are followers increasing? Is engagement up per post? Are sales up? Whats the metric? For me its LinkedIn followers and Instagram monthly impressions.

• Be more vulnerable. Everybody is sick of the wins. Nobody sees the losses. The sooner you can share the real stuff, the sooner your audience will connect. Two years ago I would have never taken the time to start this newsletter off writing about my dog. I figured you guys wouldn’t care or its “too personal”…. news flash that is EXACTLY what you’re subscribing for. You could be reading ANYTHING but you’re reading this because I’ve decided to be vulnerable week over week for years.

• Sales is in everything we do. I’m so blessed to have fallen into a career of sales while trying to support myself after college. Negotiation is such a big part of business. You say this, so they say that and you respond with that to end up at this result. Its legit human chess at the purest form. If you feel stuck, can’t make more money, it really just comes down to selling yourself or your work. Even asking your boss for a promotion. All sales. Invest in sales training. Books. Consulting. Courses. We can all get better.

• Trust is the most important thing. The best relationships and businesses are built on trust. Do everything you can to keep your integrity and to keep the trust alive. Quick bucks and sneaky stuff is never worth it. The truth always comes out. There’s no better feeling than being able to live with yourself and that you did the right thing.

Speaking of trust!

Alot of brands broke my trust this Black Friday and two lost me as a customer forever. I was so excited about their mega BFCM sale and I spent a ton of money on this beautiful knife set from a popular cooking company and a protein/hydration set from another. It has now been over 20 days and I’ve received NOTHING.

Not an update on my order. Not a message back from customer support. Not a shipping update. Sure they may have been backed up, but this was a Christmas gift I ordered a month ago and I had a million other options where I could have shopped. Although this is a marketing & customer support issue, it’s an even larger logistics & fulfillment issue.

I’ve heard from many of you that your 3PLs are not shipping fast enough. Or they jacked up storage rates for the holiday or are killing you on pick & pack. Trust is broken from the brand or vendor side in a matter of minutes and I’m so happy I found the guys at Rackd when I did a few years back.

They have been a blessing and the best 3PL I have ever worked with. I wanted to give them an extra shout out at the end of this week’s newsletter because they worked around the clock to get all of our holiday orders out within 48 hours of a customer purchasing. I have confidence typing out that they are the best 3PL in the United States because not only are they former brand operators, but they simply get shit done.

All those boxes behind me are CROSSNETS and to be honest they charge me probably 75% less to store them than any other warehouse on the market. They have an incredible boutique touch while still operating like a big 3PL who can turn around thousands of orders in a day. Just next week they are going to repackage 2000 units for me in about 3 days into brand new fancy boxes - just so I can meet our Target deadline and get our Spring purchase order shipped in time.

They have no idea I’m writing this but if you’re looking for a new warehouse next year to save on storage costs, have faster shipping, save on shipping, have better customer service, and have an extra layer of help on retail & Amazon orders then you need to work with Ian & Reed from Rackd.

Send them an email [email protected] or [email protected] and just let them know I sent you. I’m hoping I can pay it forward and surprise them with some new customers for Christmas.

That’s all I got for today. Time to put my head down and get to work! Say a prayer for Sosa and I’ll talk to you later this week.

Onward & Upward,

Chris