How We Built A $200m Company At 27 Years Old

Oct 5, 2020 49m 5s 11 insights
Stephen Bartlett, CEO of Social Chain, shares personal insights on quitting a successful company without a plan. He discusses embracing uncertainty, the power of skill stacking, smart hard work, and the critical importance of radical responsibility and nuanced thinking in a polarized world.
Actionable Insights

1. Take Radical Responsibility

Take full ownership of your life and circumstances, reframing blame as personal responsibility to regain control over your mood and situation. This approach is crucial for progress and achieving ambitions, even when uncomfortable.

2. Embrace Uncertainty Over Misery

Never accept certain misery because it’s comfortable or familiar; instead, embrace the uncertainty of seeking something better or happier. Use a logical framework to make decisions with 51% certainty, as perfect information rarely exists and faster decisions lead to faster learning and progress.

3. Develop a Quitting Framework

View quitting as a skill for winners, not a weakness, and develop a framework to let go of situations that ‘suck’ and are no longer worth the effort or rewards. Trust your internal voice to guide these decisions, uninfluenced by external expectations.

4. Cultivate Nuanced Thinking

Avoid binary thinking and the compulsion to simplify complex problems, as this limits effective solutions. Practice considering impartial, complex thoughts and engage respectfully to understand others’ perspectives, rather than to win or convert.

5. Practice Smart Consistency

Leverage consistent effort, even in small, seemingly insignificant actions, combined with continuous learning and experimentation, for compounding, long-term results. The results of consistency are often slow and invisible before becoming fast and visible.

6. Build a Skill Stack

Focus on being pretty good at a bunch of uniquely complementary skills rather than mastering just one, as this multifaceted approach leads to greater success in careers and entrepreneurship. Identify and work on developing these rare and complementary skills.

7. Prioritize Relationships

Avoid the mistake of over-investing in material success and under-investing in the people you would enjoy those things with, as material achievements mean nothing without meaningful connections. Practice smart, sustainable hard work that doesn’t sacrifice mental health or personal relationships.

8. Cultivate Unshakeable Self-Belief

Develop a formidable sense of self-belief, as it acts as a ‘crowbar’ to crack open new skills and push you forward through challenges. This internal conviction can help you achieve a life you love, even without traditional qualifications.

9. Reject Limiting Labels

Do not allow external or self-imposed labels of disadvantage, such as those related to race or past failures, to define your potential or future. The minute you believe you are defined by a disadvantage, you become defined by it.

10. Seek Worthwhile Hard Challenges

Actively pursue excruciatingly hard but worthwhile challenges, understanding that difficulty often correlates with rewards and signifies a growth moment. Doing hard things now leads to an easier life later, while doing easy things now leads to a hard life later.

11. Define Your Ideal Life

Before pursuing happiness, love, or success, take the time to understand what a ‘better life’ truly means to you. You cannot achieve these things if you don’t understand what they are or what they aren’t.