Stage 1 vs Stage 2

A lot of things are difficult but not complicated

Okay, first off…yes! I have decided to leave Beehiiv and bring Compstep back to Substack. Not that it means much since I can’t seem to nail down a consistent writing schedule for the life of me, but here we are!

Admittedly, I do like the feel of Substack more than Beehiiv. I can’t explain it, but it’s easier to open up a blank page here and let the ideas flow. Also, a close friend/mentor of mine told me he automatically deletes all emails from Beehiiv b/c “it’s a total spam shop” lol so we are back!

Anyways, in my first post of 2025, A Reflection On The Last Year, I wrote about this idea of stage 1 vs stage 2 mentality. It honestly seemed to resonate with a lot of people so I figured I’d do a deeper dive on it here.

What are stage 1 and stage 2?

To answer that question let me share a quick story. Back in August of 2023 I quit my full-time job so that I could focus on building TopSDRs and FewerTasks (my two bootstrapped businesses). At the time, I was nervous about making the jump, but I also felt a certain amount of confidence. From everything I had heard, succeeding as an entrepreneur was all about grit, determination, and tenacity. In my mind, I checked all three of these boxes. I had gotten into a top school, been a D1 athlete, written a thesis, graduated with honors, worked at a bulge bracket bank, earned a promotion, and even received a sizable bonus. I wasn’t afraid of doing hard things. In fact, I loved doing hard things. However, in retrospect, there was one key flaw with how I was thinking about this: for every one of the things I had succeeded at in high school, college, and early in my career, the path was already defined. That’s not to say succeeding was EASY, but it was fairly SIMPLE. Take rowing for example. Being really good at rowing isn’t complicated. You just have to row a lot. For sure it sucks, but if you put in the hours on the machine and on the water, odds are you will be a pretty good rower. Similarly, while being at the top of one’s analyst class at a big bank is not an easy accomplishment, it is fairly straightforward: you have to show up every day with a great attitude, anticipate the needs of the senior people on your desk, proactively take over the grunt work that nobody else wants to do, and make sure people like you. Again, not easy, but also not complicated. And that right there is what I would define as stage two. Stage two is where you know what outcome you want and you know exactly what you have to do to achieve that outcome. It doesn’t mean the process will be easy, but there is virtually no question that if you follow the prescribed steps you will achieve your goal.

So then what is stage one? To me, stage one is this really scary place that most of us probably haven’t been in since we were children. It describes a phase where success isn’t a matter of putting your head down and following a set of prescribed steps over and over again. Instead, success is a matter of doing a bunch of things at a really average level in order to figure out where you should be spending your time in the future. Stage one is being nine years old and playing three different sports + two instruments because you’re still learning what interests you and where your natural abilities lie. And that’s what makes stage one so hard. There’s no single checklist or roadmap that outlines how to win. The whole game in stage one is putting yourself out there knowing you’re going to fail at most of the things you attempt, but being okay with it because eventually, you’ll find that ONE thing that you were meant to do. The other hard part about this is that success in stage one doesn’t mean succeeding at whatever pursuit you settle on. Instead, it means committing to starting the work in order to one day, far in the future, be at the top of whatever it is you’ve chosen to pursue.

So what’s the point of all of this and how does it relate to startups? Well, when I quit my job back in August of 2023 the confidence that I had in myself was largely derived from experiences I had had in stage two. With rowing, school, and work so many of the decisions had already been made for me. Other people had drawn up the maps to success, all I had to do was follow the steps. However, that’s not what founding a business is. Building a company necessitates spending a lot of time in stage 1, which, especially as an adult, REALLY SUCKS. As kids, we’ve never been good at anything in our lives, all we know is being a beginner, so we aren’t as fearful of trying new things. However, as adults/college grads, odds are we’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to be good at something, and it’s really hard to go back to being a beginner once you’ve experienced that. But if you want to build a business you don’t have a choice. You have to sit in stage one and just accept that you’re going to fail a bunch and learn a ton of lessons the hard way.

SIDE NOTE: The cynical side of me says that large corporations know that people (particularly insecure recent college grads) fear stage one, so they’ve created systems that allow people to jump right to stage two after graduating rather than experience that discomfort again.

Conclusion:

In closing, I would say that anything truly meaningful probably lies on the other side of some painful months/years sitting in stage one. It may feel like you’re behind, but the reality is that’s all part of the process. Stage one lays the foundation for success in stage two. Skipping stage one is like being the tall kid in fifth grade who thinks he’s destined for the NBA: it might feel good in the moment, but eventually, the other kids are going to hit their growth spurts and you’re going to be S.O.L.