Joshua Esnard’s tariffs weren’t the surprise. His lack of a plan for them was. The founder of The Cut Buddy needed cash fast to clear a shipment stuck at customs, so he turned to three separate merchant cash advances. By the time the fees were added on top of what he’d borrowed, a $950,000 debt had grown to $1.2 million, according to NPR . Without a plan already in place, speed became his only option.

That’s the real cost of reactive leadership: a decision made in a panic, because no decision had been made in advance. Tariff volatility is an ongoing source of cost spikes, cash-flow strain, and pricing pressure, not a one-time shock founders can wait out. The founders navigating this well have replaced reactive purchasing and pricing with intentional systems, built long before the pressure hits. Here’s how that looks in practice:

1. Set the threshold before you need it

Matt Clark , president and CEO of Corcentric, an industry-leading provider of fleet management and managed accounts receivable solutions, sees reactive purchasing as a diagnosis. “The biggest mistake is treating a cost spike as a one-time fire to put out rather than a signal that the purchasing process is too reactive,” he told me. “Businesses focus on the lowest sticker price or ask suppliers for discounts without understanding what’s driving the increase.”

The real fix is a decision made ahead of time, not under it. Clark recommends reviewing supplier costs and contracts on a regular cadence, benchmarking pricing against the market, and setting clear thresholds in advance that automatically trigger a renegotiation or sourcing review, so the call gets made on data instead of emotion. For anything critical to the business, he’s honest about the alternative to single-sourcing: “Redundancy is cheap insurance against a decision made under pressure.”

2. Stay anchored to why you started

A system tells you how to decide, but it doesn’t tell you why. Thresholds and decision triggers are only useful if there’s something underneath them, a reason the business exists that tells you which trade-offs are worth making and which aren’t. Without that, a threshold just becomes another number to react to.

When KPMG surveyed CEOs in New Zealand during the COVID-19 crisis, 80% said their organization’s sense of purpose gave them a clear framework for making fast, effective decisions. A clear “why” doesn’t just feel reassuring; it’s what turns a fast decision into the right one instead of just a quick one. When a threshold says it’s time to renegotiate, switch suppliers, or absorb a cost instead of passing it on, it’s the mission that decides which option actually fits the business you’re trying to build, not just the one that solves today’s problem.

3. Explain increases before you make them

Most businesses facing tariff-driven costs don’t have the luxury of simply absorbing them. According to the New York Fed’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey , about 80% of small businesses passed on at least some of their higher costs to customers, roughly 60% absorbed part of the increase internally too, and many did both at once. That makes how the price increase gets communicated as much a leadership decision as a pricing one.

Dean Ricker, president of Skolnik Industries, backs every price increase with outside data from reputable sources, so the person he’s charging has something concrete to bring to their own boss. “It’s as much about transparency as it is about education,” he told Vistage . Scott Farrell, president of i2 Construction, takes a similar approach. He treats himself as a trusted advisor to his customers first, which means getting ahead of a price increase instead of letting them discover it on an invoice.

Founders who protect their customer relationships have the price conversation first, with a reason attached.

The cost of waiting until it’s urgent

Esnard’s $1.2 million was the cost of having no threshold, no anchor, and no plan for the conversation that follows a price increase, all three things that needed to be built well before the moment that forced a decision. Tariffs, like most cost shocks, aren’t going anywhere. The founders treating that as the new baseline are building the system now, before the next fire needs financing.