The Dip Quotes

“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“If you took organic chemistry in college, you’ve experienced the Dip. Academia doesn’t want too many unmotivated people to attempt medical school, so they set up a screen. Organic chemistry is the killer class, the screen that separates the doctors from the psychologists. If you can’t handle organic chemistry, well, then, you can’t go to med school.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Here’s an assignment for you: Write it down. Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“When you’re the best in the world, you share the benefits (the income, the attention, the privileges, the respect) with just a handful of people or organizations or brands.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“The driving force that gets people to pay a specialist is that their disease is unpredictable or hard to diagnose. The reason we’re here is to solve the hard problems.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“You really can’t try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip. They don’t just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go. Just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean you have to live happily with it. Dips don’t last quite as long when you whittle at them.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“As a result, the rewards for being first are enormous. It’s not a linear scale. It’s not a matter of getting a little more after giving a little more. It’s a curve, and a steep one.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Where does the scarcity come from? It comes from the hurdles that the markets and our society set up. It comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The system depends on it.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Doug has hit a plateau. He’s not going to be challenged, pushed, or promoted to president. Doug, regardless of what he could actually accomplish, has stopped evolving—at least in the eyes of the people who matter.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Doug needs to leave for a very simple reason. He’s been branded. Everyone at the company has an expectation of who Doug is and what he can do.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“When the pain gets so bad that you’re ready to quit, you’ve set yourself up as someone with nothing to lose. And someone with nothing to lose has quite a bit of power. You can go for broke. Challenge authority. Attempt unattempted alternatives. Lean into a problem; lean so far that you might just lean right through it.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“The market wants to see you persist. It demands a signal from you that you’re serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“you also need to quit all the Cul-de-Sacs that you’re currently idling your way through. You must quit the projects and investments and endeavors that don’t offer you the same opportunity. It’s difficult, but it’s vitally important.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“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.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Scarcity, as we’ve seen, is the secret to value. If there wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no scarcity.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. Organizations settle too. For good enough instead of best in the world. If you’re not going to put in the effort to be my best possible choice, why bother?”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“Faced with an infinite number of choices, many people pick the market leader.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

“It’s called Zipf’s law, and it applies to résumés and college application rates and best-selling records and everything in between. Winners win big because the marketplace loves a winner.”
― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit