How April Hicke and Toast Put $10M+ in Women's Hands in Tech

Something that you had alluded to earlier, too, that I want to jump back to is also you talked about you're really quick to action things.

You find efficiencies and then you move with it and then you've learned along the way.

Sometimes I might have to take a step back.

And I think that's actually one of the most difficult parts for leaders, that combination of curiosity, which you just mentioned, plus that let's not be biased to action right away because sometimes when we slow down, we can speed up.

So what did that look like for you as you continue to progress through your leadership roles, making sure you got enough context, but actually like moved at the right pace, whatever right actually means? Yeah.

I think this is like a constant work in progress for me anyways, because I think it's almost like balancing data-driven decision-making with trusting your gut too.

And I actually had a good leader tell me recently, a mentor of mine, he was like, April, your gut is data.

And he told me to reread Blank, which is such a great book because it's true.

We've already got these decisions.

And I think that there's times, you know, where...

I wanted to slow myself down, but almost that has been a mistake.

It depends on the context too.

So we recently hired someone and realized very quickly they were not the right fit.

And I was like, I have to fire fast.

I have to fire fast.

There's like different things that have to be done quickly.

That's one of the mistakes I think I've made at Toast too is that we've, or in my leadership journey in general is carrying people for too long.

and then recognizing that they're not the right thing, you're not doing anyone any favors by doing that.

But at the same time, I think that having rest and having downtime, and I like that you said slowing down to speed up, I think rest as a strategy has been really important to me because that's when I can actually sit down and think about things.

And so even if I don't action something right away, I think one of the greatest things that I've developed over the past 10 years is the ability to respond rather than to react.

Because I think if I pause, even responding to an email sometimes, what I would say 24 hours later is not the same thing that I would have said had I like immediately responded to that email.

And so I built into my calendar after I burnt out, as most do, the first year of building this company, I like heavily built out.

My mentor was like, You need to get outside, take your fucking shoes off, put your feet on the bare earth, like go touch grass, literally get outside and pull something from the forest and from fresh air.

And I think if we never have time to get quiet, we'll never be able to solve problems.

And so I think slowing down in my personal life and like building that time into my calendar has allowed me to to make fast decisions when I need to, even if that decision is to not respond right now.