Our work lives in the long game. We start, acquire, and build businesses by investing capital, time, talent, and technology, and yes, one of those efforts sits inside a holding company. That means our default setting is patience, not panic. The internet loves shiny new things.
It arrives with confetti, a countdown timer, and a promise to replace everything you know by next Tuesday. We prefer calm rooms, sharpened pencils, and models that survive contact with reality. Trends are loud, but signals are quiet. The quiet wins.
Trends feel like jet fuel. They are fast, intoxicating, and they smell like victory. The trouble is that jet fuel burns hot, then empties the tank. When a market stampedes, attention becomes a commodity, and real judgment gets crowded out. Chasing a trend turns your strategy into a reaction function.
You move because others moved, then you justify the motion after the fact. A mirage looks like water. Walk toward it and you still end up thirsty. We want actual wells, the kind that refill slowly, reliably, and in all seasons.
Every pivot has invisible costs. Switching focus resets learning curves, interrupts customer relationships, and drains institutional memory. People stop asking “how do we get better” and start asking “what are we doing this week.” That switch taxes morale more than spreadsheets can capture.
The company’s muscle tone weakens because repetition is how teams get strong. Constant pivoting replaces craftsmanship with whiplash. It is hard to compound anything when your timeline is measured in news cycles. We would rather be boring on the right hill than exciting on the wrong one.
Trends are noisy because their incentives reward loudness. Influencers produce velocity, not verification. Metrics inflate, then deflate, then pretend nothing happened. The cure is signal. Signal shows up as retention that does not need gimmicks, customer feedback that gets more specific over time, and unit economics that keep their dignity under stress.
When you tune for signal, fads fall below the threshold. That is not cynicism. It is discipline. Noise can be entertaining, but it does not keep the lights on.
Compounding is less dramatic than a trend, and more dangerous to ignore. It works like gravity, quietly, then all at once. When you keep a focus steady, learning stacks, brand trust thickens, and operating leverage emerges from the fog.
Customers start finishing your sentences because you have been consistent for years. New hires ramp faster because your systems rhyme. Partnerships shift from experiments to habits. Suddenly, outsiders call it luck. It is not luck. It is patience plus process.
Patience sounds soft until you weaponize it. If your horizon is five to ten years, you can price fairly, you can build features customers actually use, and you can give experiments time to ripen. Your competitors, who need a headline by Friday, trade durability for dopamine.
You get the talent that values craft. You get vendors who prefer stable counter-parties. You get customers who stop comparing you to every pop-up competitor, because they can tell who is still going to be here in December.
Slogans are cheap. Systems are expensive to build and priceless to own. A system is the set of rules that makes your decisions predictable and your outcomes repeatable. It covers capital allocation, hiring, pricing, and product priorities. It defines how you choose what not to do.
When a trend knocks on the door, systems ask the only question that matters: does this improve our flywheel. If yes, welcome and take a seat. If not, the door stays shut, even if the line outside looks exciting.
If we do not chase, how do we choose? Slowly and with criteria that survive fashion. The first test is simple. Does this solve a problem that existed last year and will still exist next year. The second test is differentiation. Can we do it materially better, faster, or cheaper, and can that edge persist.
The third test is cash. Not theoretical cash. Actual cash that shows up in bank accounts and is not allergic to scrutiny. The final test is fit. Do we have the people, the time, and the appetite to do this well?
Durable demand does not need a parade. It shows up in repeat usage patterns and customers who naturally recommend the product without incentives. It survives algorithm changes and interest rate shifts. If the demand leans on a temporary subsidy, or lives inside a platform that can change the rules by flipping a switch, we treat it like weather, not climate. We are interested in climate. It lets you plant orchards, not just harvest mushrooms after a rain.
A moat is not a vibe. It is a spreadsheet and a story that agrees with each other. We look for switching costs that make sense to a CFO, network effects that actuate at realistic densities, and brand trust that shows up as pricing power. If you need a magnifying glass to see the moat, it is not a moat. The most comfortable moats are the ones customers build for you, because the product fits so well that leaving would feel like ripping out plumbing.
Clicks are not evil, they are just not money. Cash flow tells you whether the business pays for its own future. It creates room to hire carefully, to say no to bad partnerships, and to build features that matter instead of features that demo well. When markets wobble, cash flow steadies the ship. It is also the simplest scoreboard. Are we generating surplus, and can we reinvest it at attractive returns. If the answer is yes, trends can keep shouting from the sidelines.
Opportunity fit is also team fit. A project that requires heroics every quarter will burn good people. We prefer plans that let us be consistently excellent instead of occasionally brilliant. Time horizons should match the temperament of the team.
Builders who enjoy deep work thrive on multi-year arcs where quality compounds. Operators who prize clarity thrive where processes mature and the next step is clear. Put the right people on the right clocks and even hard problems become tractable.
We love technology, we just do not worship it. Tools are leverage, not identity. If a new tool makes us faster or smarter, we adopt it, then we measure the impact, then we either keep it or throw it out. We refuse to install buzzwords into roadmaps. If a technology cannot explain itself with a clear cost, a clear benefit, and a clear plan, it can wait outside. The world does not pay you to be fashionable. It pays you to be useful and reliable.
Trophies look great on slides. Tools change operating margins. A trophy requires new jargon and an awkward demo. A tool integrates cleanly, reduces error rates, and frees people to do the work that only humans can do. If a tool becomes a trophy because the market wants to see it, that is marketing, not operations. We prefer operations. It pays better, and it keeps promises.
Data is persuasive until it is aged like milk. We put deadlines on analysis, then we ship decisions. If the decision cannot be shipped, we remove complexity until it can. Trends like to drown you in dashboards.
We like to pick a handful of metrics that map to customer value and cost structure, then stare at them until cause and effect emerge. When the numbers are honest, they make strategy easy. When they are theatrical, they make leaders look busy while the business goes sideways.
Not chasing trends is not the same as fearing change. We update beliefs when reality insists. The trick is to separate volatility from fragility. Volatility you can live with. Fragility breaks you. We seek lines of business that can take a punch. Resilience starts with simple products, proper pricing, and honest accounting.
It continues with reserves, conservative debt, and teams trained to tell the truth early. Then reinvestment compounds the resilience. Profits find their way into better products, better people, and better processes.
Reinvestment only works if it is pointed at the right targets. The best targets are those that amplify your existing strengths. If customers love your support, invest in training and tools that make response times even faster.
If they love your reliability, invest in infrastructure that reduces failure modes. Spreading reinvestment thinly across a dozen experiments looks busy. Concentrated reinvestment looks quiet, then suddenly your lead doubles and you wonder why it felt so calm.
Good guardrails save you from your future self. We predefine what success looks like, how we will measure it, and the conditions under which we will walk away. That turns decisions into checklists instead of arguments. It is easier to resist a trend when you have already agreed on the limits.
A guardrail can be a budget cap, a threshold for retention, or a rule about customer concentration. When a tempting opportunity shows up, we test it against the guardrails. If it fails, we pass, and we sleep well.
Trends have a job. They pressure test your convictions and remind you that markets are alive. Our job is different. We build, we buy, and we operate for the long haul. That requires a bias toward compounding, not spectacle. It rewards systems over slogans, signal over noise, and cash over clicks.
The result is not flashy, and it should not be. It is a set of businesses that continue to serve customers year after year, with teams that know what they are doing and why it matters. Skip the stampede, keep your footing, and give compounding the time it needs to work.
Ryan Schwab serves as Chief Revenue Officer at HOLD.co, where he leads all revenue generation, business development, and growth strategy efforts. With a proven track record in scaling technology, media, and services businesses, Ryan focuses on driving top-line performance across HOLD.co’s portfolio through disciplined sales systems, strategic partnerships, and AI-driven marketing automation. Prior to joining HOLD.co, Ryan held senior leadership roles in high-growth companies, where he built and led revenue teams, developed go-to-market strategies, and spearheaded digital transformation initiatives. His approach blends data-driven decision-making with deep market insight to fuel sustainable, scalable growth.
