What the FRIC?
The story behind the method
I got so tired of watching entrepreneurs chase funding that didn't fit what they actually wanted.
Everything they had went into the raise — time, energy, attention. All of it, because they were convinced they couldn't succeed without it.
I saw it over and over, for years. So I built Fric.
Because money was almost never the solution.
Some raised and thrived. Others burned straight through whatever cash they had - regardless of where it came from. And some who never raised a dollar built something that outlasted both. Whatever separated them, it wasn't the funding.
The ones who lasted had something almost boring in common: they were good at deciding where to put whatever resources they had. Not just money - their time, their energy, their credibility, the goodwill of the people around them. All of it finite. All of it being spent constantly, whether or not anyone was deciding on purpose.
That's when I started seeing it differently.
Cash is tight.
We need to raise.
The team's stretched.
Growth has stalled.
Those aren't the problem. They're symptoms — the part you can see.
Underneath sits the part nobody talks about at conferences: Which customers to focus on. What is working — and what to stop doing. Where the time is actually going. Who to hire, and when.
So chasing funding isn't foolish. It's a misdiagnosis. And money is an amplifier, not an answer — raise without fixing what's underneath and you don't solve the problem, you scale it.
Being your own best investor isn't about getting more capital. It's about how you invest everything you've got.
I wasn't just seeing it from the outside.
I started in my family's business — door to door, with business cards that said Boss's Daughter. You learn early that every dollar has to come from somewhere.
Later I ran finance at a company I helped build and sell. Then I bootstrapped two of my own. (There was a decade as an investment banker in there too. I'm recovering.)
Different businesses, same questions every time. Take on the big client despite all their certification requirements? Raise another round or cut expenses to get profitable? Are these potential partners serious or are they just looking for industry intel? And no guarantee of getting it right.
Experience doesn't give you all the answers. Fric started as a product, and I felt it stall for months before I'd admit it out loud - to myself, or to anyone else. When I finally did, what I'd been missing was simpler than I wanted it to be: investing your resources well requires a decision-making process that you believe in and use.
So I stopped putting time, energy and money into what wasn't working, and invested them in figuring out what was. That's not a story I tell about the method. It is the method.
So I built the process I needed.
Fric is a four-step method for working through one real decision at a time.
Frame the issue · Right-size your approach · Invest to learn · Commit to what works
It starts with what you actually want — not what you're supposed to want. And because you write down what you decided and why, the decision stays made. There's something to check it against instead of arguing with yourself again.
See it live during an upcoming workshop.
What the method is built on.
Not rules. Principles.
Choice
Pick your own path.
Insight
Explore. Reflect. Adjust.
Alignment
Your goals first. Then your partners'.
Imperfect Action
Just take the next step.
Relationships
People are the bottom line.
Explore. Reflect. Adjust.
The path to success requires knowing where you are, where you’re going and preparing for the pitfalls that await.
The FRIC method helps you stop the merry go round of decisions that keep coming back.