The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)

by Seth Godin

The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out.

The brave thing to do is to tough it out and end up on the other side—getting all the benefits that come from scarcity. The mature thing is not even to bother starting to snowboard because you’re probably not going to make it through the Dip. And the stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the Dip. A few people will choose to do the brave thing and end up the best in the world. Informed people will probably choose to do the mature thing and save their resources for a project they’re truly passionate about. Both are fine choices. It’s the last choice, the common choice, the choice to give it a shot and then quit that you must avoid if you want to succeed.

In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition. If that adversity also causes you to quit, though, it’s all for nothing.

When Jack Welch remade GE, the most fabled decision he made was this: If we can’t be #1 or #2 in an industry, we must get out. Why sell a billion-dollar division that’s making a profit quite happily while ranking #4 in market share? Easy. Because it distracts management attention. It sucks resources and capital and focus and energy. And most of all,

it teaches people in the organization that it’s okay not to be the best in the world. Jack quit the dead ends. By doing so, he freed resources to get his other businesses through the Dip.

Hardworking, motivated people find diversification a natural outlet for their energy and drive. Diversification feels like the right thing to do. Enter a new market, apply for a job in a new area, start a new sport. Who knows? This might just be the one. And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner. Before you enter a new market, consider what would happen if you managed to get through the Dip and win in the market you’re already in.

The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start. If you can embrace that simple rule, you’ll be a lot choosier about which journeys you start.

If you can get through the Dip, if you can keep going when the system is expecting you to stop, you will achieve extraordinary results.

People who make it through the Dip are scarce indeed, so they generate more value.

I’d rather have you focus on quitting (or not quitting) as a go-up opportunity. It’s not about avoiding the humiliation of failure. Even more important, you can realize that quitting the stuff you don’t care about or the stuff you’re mediocre at or better yet quitting the Cul-de-Sacs frees up your resources to obsess about the Dips that matter. If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.

The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

Serial Quitters Spend a Lot of Time in Line Observing the supermarket over the years, I’ve determined that there are three common checkout strategies. My local supermarket may be like yours—it usually has four or five checkouts open. If you watch carefully, you’ll see people adopting one of three strategies: The first is to pick the shortest line and get in it. Stick with it, no matter what. The second is to pick the shortest line and switch lines once (at a maximum) if something holds up your line—like the clueless person with a check but no check-cashing card. But that’s it, just one switch. The third is to pick the shortest line and keep scanning the other lines. Switch lines if a shorter one appears. Continue this process until you leave the store. The problem with the third strategy is obvious. Every time you switch lines, you’re starting over. In your search for a quick fix, you almost certainly waste time and you definitely waste energy jumping back and forth. There are queues everywhere. Do you know an entrepreneur-wannabe who is on his sixth or twelfth new project? He jumps from one to another, and every time he hits an obstacle, he switches to a new, easier, better oppor -tunity. And while he’s a seeker, he’s never going to get anywhere. He never gets anywhere because he’s always switching lines, never able to really run for it. While starting up is thrilling, it’s not until you get through the Dip that your

efforts pay off. Countless entrepreneurs have perfected the starting part, but give up long before they finish paying their dues. The sad news is that when you start over, you get very little credit for how long you stood in line with your last great venture. This malady doesn’t afflict just entrepreneurs. Advertisers who are always jumping from one agency to another, or one medium to another, end up wasting a fortune. If it takes ten impressions to make an impact, and you’ve delivered eight, that switch is going to cost you a lot of time and money.

sent loud and clear. Please understand this: If you’re not able to get through the Dip in an exceptional way, you must quit. And quit right now. Because if your order book is 80 percent filled with prospects where you just sort of show up, you’re not only wasting your time, you’re also stealing your energy from the 20 percent of the calls where you have a chance to create a breakthrough. Once again, getting through the Dip is a valid strategy. It isn’t a good strategy because successful salespeople are annoying—no, sticking through the Dip is a great strategy because it changes the entire dynamic of the salesperson’s day. It is not a moral choice. It’s a strategic one. “I’m getting through this Dip with you because it’s important to both of us” is the very best signal to send.

seems easy and exciting. It’s easy to be seduced by the new money and the rush to the fresh. The problem is that this leads to both an addiction and a very short attention span. If it doesn’t work today, the thinking goes, why should I wait around until tomorrow? The problem is that only a tiny portion of the audience is looking for the brand-new thing. Most people are waiting for the tested, the authenticated, and the proven. Very quietly, the Microsofts of the world hang in, going from version 1 to version 2, knowing that by version 3, the world will be a different (and better) place for them. Micro -soft failed twice with Windows, four times with Word, three times with Excel. The entire company is based on the idea of slogging through the Dip, relentlessly changing tactics but never quitting the big idea.

them until they were well baked. Procter & Gamble has killed hundreds of products. Starbucks killed their music-CD–burning stations. Social Security reform has been dropped a dozen times. Don’t fall in love with a tactic and defend it forever. Instead, decide once and for all whether you’re in a market or not. And if you are, get through that Dip.

behind. When a kid drops out of football or karate, it’s not because she’s carefully considered the long-term consequences of her action. She does it because her coach keeps yelling at her, and it’s not fun. It’s better to stop. Short-term pain has more impact on most people than long-term benefits do, which is why it’s so important for you to amplify the long-term benefits of not quitting. You need to remind yourself of life at the other

end of the Dip because it’s easier to overcome the pain of yet another unsuccessful cold call if the reality of a successful sales career is more concrete. It’s easier to stick out a lousy class in college if you can picture graduation day. Even more vivid is the power of keeping score. If you can track your Alexa rank online or your class rank or your market share or your spot in the sales-team pecking order, working your way up to number one is daily feedback that helps you deal with the short-term hassles.

Winners understand that taking that pain now prevents a lot more pain later. The same applies to the strategic management of organizations. The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: Is the pain of the Dip worth the benefit of the light at the end of the tunnel?

you. If you realize you’re at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it’s a smart one.

“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” Now that’s good advice.

When the pressure is greatest to compromise, to drop out, or to settle, your desire to quit should be at its lowest. The decision to quit is often made in the moment. But that’s exactly the wrong time to make such a critical decision. The reason so many of us quit in the Dip is that without a compass or a plan, the easiest thing to do is to give up. While that might be the easiest path, it’s also the least successful one.

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, told me, “We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we’d make a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.”

not to quit because it’s easier than quitting. That choice—to stick with it in the absence of forward progress—is a waste. It’s a waste because of the opportunity cost—you could be doing something far better, and far more pleasurable, with your time.

When you are trying to influence an entire market, the value of not quitting is quite high. Yes, you should probably be eager to quit a marketing tactic that isn’t paying for itself, or even a particular product feature that isn’t appealing to your target audience. But your commitment to the market needs to be unquestioned—it’s much cheaper and easier to build your foundation in one market than to flit from one to another until you find a quick success.

definitely keep aiming for the bigger goal. The seduction of not quitting—and the source of all those stories about sticking it out—almost always comes from people moving through a market. When you hear about an author who got turned down thirty times before signing with a publisher or of an overnight sensation who paid her dues for a decade in

coffee shops, you’re seeing how persistence pays off across a market. On the other hand, when was the last time you heard about someone who stuck with a dead-end job or a dead-end relationship or a dead-end sales prospect until suddenly, one day, the person at the other end said, “Wow, I really admire your persistence; let’s change our relationship for the better”? It doesn’t happen.