How to Bounce Back Faster

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome back.

Last week we got into the literal Science Of Success. You can read that (and all past issues, here)

Today, I'm going to remind you of a certainty we'll all face:

Something's going to go wrong for you this year. Guaranteed.

You'll get a polite no on a pitch. You'll make a call that costs you money. You'll say something weird in a meeting and replay it the whole drive home.

Cool. Welcome to doing anything worth doing.

I'm 40 and I've been building companies since I was 27. Plenty of it went wrong along the way.

The people who win get back up stupidly fast. That's the whole game.

So let's make you faster.

The sulk is the expensive bit

A no takes ten seconds. The week you spend replaying it is what actually costs you.

Two founders get rejected on a Monday:

One stews all week and goes quiet
One sulks for an evening, sleeps on it and is back on the phone pitching investors on Tuesday

Founder two gets way more shots over a year. More shots, more wins. Simple maths.

And it compounds. Every quick bounce makes the next knock feel smaller, so you start taking bigger swings.

Being brutal with yourself is overrated

Loads of ambitious people think beating themselves up keeps them sharp. The research says otherwise.

Two Berkeley psychologists, Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, ran four experiments on how people handle their own mistakes. In one, students tanked a brutal test. Some were told to go easy on themselves, some got a pep talk about how great they were, and some got nothing.

The go easy on yourself crowd studied the longest for the next test.

Go figure. Self compassion turns out to be a performance tool.

Beat yourself up and one bad day becomes your whole identity. Go easy on yourself and it stays a bad day. Bad days are easy to bounce from.

I've had reps

I've built six startups. Three failed. The first one, Grabble, I started at 27, and it flopped. Then I burnt out.

If I'd taken any of that as proof I wasn't built for this, there'd be no Heights. Today it does $40M a year and has passed a million orders.

What actually helped was getting faster at the ugly bit in the middle. Feel it, grab the lesson, move on.

How to bounce back faster

1. Set a sulk timer

You're allowed to be gutted. Give it an evening, maybe a weekend. When the timer goes off, you're done.

Feelings you let in leave faster than the ones you fight.

2. Talk to yourself like a coach

Swap "I" for your own name.

"Dan, bad call. What's next?"

Feels daft. Works anyway. University of Michigan research found people who self-talk this way feel less stressed and perform better under pressure.

3. Be your own mate

If your mate messed up, you'd buy them a pint and help them figure out the next move.

Do that for yourself. Pint optional.

4. One line, then close the tab

Write down one thing you'd do differently. One line.

Anything longer is just replaying it.

5. Move within 24 hours

Send one email. Book one call. Doesn't matter how small.

Motion kills the spiral.

6. Go home

Becoming a dad shifted my priorities, and it's made bad days a lot easier to put down.

Nothing shrinks a rough day at work like spending time with my girls. Whatever went wrong can wait until they're asleep, and usually it looks smaller by then.

Work is one part of your life. Act like it.

To getting back up faster,

Dan

P.S. That thing you're still carrying from last month? Give it one more evening, write your one line and put it down. You've got better stuff to do.

School is not enough

This superb short piece on the future of education (a topic we discuss a lot at home, especially as my wife is considering co-founding a new modern school concept that tackles these exact points)

Read Here

Diary of a CEO with Adam Neumann

My word I loved this episode. Might be my fave of his yet. Steven barely got to control it, Adam is such a force, love or hate him, believe him or bullshit, it's impossible not to have an opinion but to me his is a story of Icarus and he's going again. I respect the big thinking and the hubris, and find him very inspiring, what about you?

Listen Here

Digger

Tom Cruise at his peak and what a performance. Wow. Not what I expected, probably what I needed. The kind of film you don't want to say more about cos it is better to enjoy it curious and leave surprised. Go watch it, enjoy.

Watch Here

A 2020 study published in Emotion found that people who learned to accept their “non-ideal emotional states”, including low motivation, low energy, and neutral days, experienced significantly higher overall well-being and lower stress.

The key insight: self-acceptance amplifies emotional resilience, while self-judgment weakens it.

📌 Quick Takeaway →

Your average days aren’t failures; they’re emotional training grounds.
When you stop punishing yourself for being human, everything in your life compounds faster.

→ Link to study

In my goal to help more entrepreneurs/people who are looking to level up their careers, I've just started taking 1-1 consulting calls (only 1 a week)

Why book a call? Some of my expertise/success:

I've built 6 startups. 3 fails, 1 win, and 2 still going.
E-Commerce: Heights - with revenue over $40M a year.
Community: Foundrs, one of the UK's top founder communities
Podcasting: Leaders Media - Bootstrapped to #1 in business and 10M downloads
Health/Mental Health: Overcame depression, insomnia, burnout and anxiety in pursuit of success
Angel Investing: I've invested in over 100 companies
Personal Brand: Over 400,000 followers across social
Hear me on Diary of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

So if you're interested in booking a session with me to talk all things business or building a personal brand, book for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots).

Book a Call with Dan