Success Is Cyclical, Not Linear

Read time: 6 minutes

Hey, welcome back.

Before we get started with this email, I recently received a couple of messages from subscribers saying they didn’t get an issue of Science of Success. My team and I believe we’ve found the problem and fixed it. However, if you’ve now started receiving this newsletter in your inbox but are no longer interested in the content, you can unsubscribe here.

Anyway, last week, I wrote about how I overcame my mental health challenges and how you can too.

You can read that (and all past issues, here).

One of the ways out of the doom and gloom is community, I am flying to Morocco to the Atlas Mountains today to spend a long weekend with 25 awesome entrepreneurs. The twist? I'm bringing my 10 week old daughter, Kaia for her first international adventure. Wish me luck 🤣

Today, I want to zoom out and share something that took me way too long to understand: success doesn’t move in straight lines.

The Lie of Linear Growth

We love graphs that go up and to the right. Revenue charts. Follower counts. Net worth.
They make it seem like progress should always be forward, smooth, and predictable.

But real growth looks nothing like that.
It’s jagged. Messy. Full of dips, plateaus, and reversals.

And here’s the problem: most people quit in the dip.

They think the dip means they’re failing, when actually, the dip is just part of the cycle.

What Heights Taught Me

When Heights was scaling, there were moments where it felt like rocket fuel. Every ad worked. Every podcast hit. Customers poured in.

Then came the plateaus. Months where nothing seemed to move. Growth flatlined. Campaigns fell flat. In fact, we went 20 months with no revenue growth at all, stuck at £5M, with one product, unable to break through, literally stuck.

Old me would have panicked. Tried to rip everything up and start again.

But I’d been through enough cycles by then to see the pattern:

• Surges are exciting but short-lived
• Plateaus are boring but stabilising
• Dips are uncomfortable but fertile

Because in those dips, you learn. You refine. You strip away what isn’t working.
The dip is the compost that feeds the next phase of growth.

With Heights, our lesson this time was about messaging. When we launched all our messaging was about the brain, about science, and very rooted in my founding story.

The problem is, we'd exhausted the "early adopter" audience who are interested in this kind of niche story. To break through, we needed to evolve our messaging.

The first and biggest step was changing the name of our core product from "The Smart Supplement" to "Vitals".

The second was to change from shoving science down everyone's throats, and instead focus on human stories.

At first this didn't really work because people are deeply sceptical (as they should be) of supplements.

We then had a bit of a breakthrough when celebrities started sharing how we'd helped them reach their Heights, and we noticed their audiences actually listened. This could never have happened to us though without a long enough time in the market, with science messaging and trust to build, with an exceptional product that works, that got authentically tried and shared by those celebrities.

Even so, the right messenger and wrong message can still fail as much as the wrong messenger and right message.

Through a lot of patient iteration over time, we found the right messengers to various demographics, and simplified our messages enough that people were curious to try.

All of this happened in the dip.

Why Cycles Feel So Hard

Here’s the trap. We expect progress to feel like momentum. But most of the time, progress feels like maintenance.

The gym is the perfect example.

• First month: exciting. Muscles ache, weight drops, you feel alive.
• Sixth month: routine. Same workouts, slower gains.
• Twelfth month: boring. No visible progress, same lifts, maybe even regression.

But the twelfth month is when the real body is being built. Because consistency through the boring and the stagnant is what separates temporary change from transformation.

The Cycle Everywhere

Think about it:

• Businesses surge after launches, then flatten before the next wave
• Relationships glow in the honeymoon, then test you in the grind
• Creativity bursts with inspiration, then hits the dreaded block before breaking through

If you walk away in the flat or the dip, you never see the next curve.

A Reframe for the Dip

Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me” in the plateau, ask:

• What is this phase asking me to refine
• What skills am I developing here that will compound later
• Am I bored because it’s broken, or because I’m finally stable enough to repeat the basics

Sometimes the most powerful work you can do is to simply not quit when it feels dull.

A Challenge for This Week

Look at something in your life that feels like it’s not moving.
Instead of tearing it up or abandoning it, hold the frame: you’re in a cycle.

Ask yourself:

• What phase am I in right now
• If this is the dip, what’s the lesson hiding here
• Can I trust that compounding needs stillness as much as action

Stick with it. The next curve might be closer than you think.

To cyclical success,
Dan

See you next week folks - in the meantime, wishing you success!

Dan

Want to take your success (even more) seriously? 👇​
🧠 Fuel your brain and feed your gut, try Heights here (use code 'SOSDMS' for 15% off your first month of any subscription​

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