We launched Hiya in March 2020, on the day the WHO announced the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read that again. Not the month. Not the week. The day.
At the time, it was terrifying. We thought the entire world was falling apart.
I want to sit in that moment for a second, because the instinct when you tell a story like this is to rush to the happy part. Skip the fear, get to the lesson. But the fear was the context for every decision we made that spring, and if I skip it, the lesson won't land.
Here's what the fear actually looked like: we were very focused on being proper stewards of what was, effectively, our own capital.
That's it. That's the unglamorous center of the story.
No war room. No heroic pivot. Just stewardship, which in practice means two questions on a loop: how much of this can we afford to lose, and what do we actually know versus what are we guessing?
Because when the capital is effectively your own, fear changes shape. It stops being a mood and starts being math.
Now, you probably didn't launch into a global pandemic. But I'd bet you've had your own version of that morning. The supplier who goes dark. The ad account that gets shut off. Something outside your control detonates, and suddenly every number in your business means something different than it did yesterday.
And here's where I think most operators get expensive. Not in the event itself: in how they respond to it.
Some freeze. Every decision gets deferred until things settle down, and things never settle down.
Some panic-spend. Throw money at the problem and call it decisiveness.
Some pretend. Keep running the old plan, because changing it means admitting the old plan is dead.
All three cost you. The freeze costs you time. The panic costs you cash. The pretending costs you both, and it charges you quietly, which is worse.
I'm not judging any of those responses. The fear is normal. The fear might even be rational. The question is what you do with it.
For us, the answer came back to stewardship: treat the money like it's your own, because it was. Was that the only right answer? No. This is a way, not the way.
The principle: treat every dollar in the business like it's your own
Fear will stop being a mood and become numbers you can actually work with.
That wasn't theory for us at Hiya: it was effectively our own capital, and we were very focused on being proper stewards of it.
Why it works: a steward can't freeze, panic-spend, or pretend. Each of those fails the same test... would I do this with my own money? Once that test is running, the scary event gets broken into questions with answers: what can we afford to lose, what do we know, what are we guessing.
When it applies: any moment where something outside your control just repriced your business.
When it doesn't: when stewardship curdles into timidity. Hoarding cash is not the principle. Running every bet through the math is.
So do this differently: decide your test before the crisis, not during it. That's a way, not the way. But it's the one I'd bet on.
Put it to work this week
By Friday, you'll have a steward's view of your own business: the numbers that turn fear into math, decided before your version of March 2020 shows up.
Pull your cash position and your committed spend for the next 90 days. One page. If it takes more than an hour, that's finding number one.
Calculate what you can afford to lose. Not vaguely... an actual number. This is the question we were asking ourselves in that spring, and it's the one that keeps fear from becoming a mood.
Find the three bets in your business right now that you would not make with your own money. Be honest. Nobody's reading this list but you.
Decide your default response in advance: which expenses pause first, which keep running no matter what, and who makes that call. Write it down. A plan you decide during the crisis isn't a plan, it's a reaction.
Act on the worst of the three bets from step 3. Kill it, shrink it, or put a date on when it has to prove itself.
Check the whole thing against the test: would I do this with my own money? We launched into the day the WHO announced the pandemic with effectively our own capital, and stewardship of it was the whole playbook.
That's a way, not the way. But it's a week well spent either way.
One next step
If you're not a member yet, join The Builder’s Room and run this week's exercise with us; if you are, bring your numbers to this week's call.
