The Dip - Seth Godin

Metadata

Author: Godin, Seth
Full Title: The Dip - Seth Godin
Category: #books

5 key takeaways

Winners capture outsized rewards (Zipf’s Law). In any field—résumés, records, coffee roasts—the top performer reaps disproportionate attention and profit. Your job is to position yourself to be the standout in a specific arena, not merely one of many.
Mass markets are splintering into micromarkets. There may no longer be a single “best” for everyone, but each niche still crowns its own champion. Pick a narrowly defined market you can realistically dominate rather than chasing the vanished mainstream.
The Dip is a deliberate barrier—and a shortcut. Between the excitement of starting and the payoff of mastery lies a long, difficult stretch. Pushing through it filters out most competitors and ultimately gets you to meaningful success faster than hopping from one venture to the next.
Choose fields with a steep Dip—and commit before you start. Big rewards live on the far side of tough manufacturing, conceptual, or skill Dips. Decide in advance what circumstances would justify quitting; otherwise you’ll bail when it hurts most and waste your earlier investment.
Match your resources to the market size. Assess how much “pressure” (time, money, grit) you have, then pick a tire that fits—large enough to matter, small enough for you to reach “best” status. Making the world smaller (tightening the niche) often turns an impossible climb into a winnable race.

Highlights

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. (Location 84)
If you’ve read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, (Location 97)
The mass market is dying. There is no longer one best song or one best kind of coffee. Now there are a million micromarkets, but each micromarket still has a best. (Location 123)
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. (Location 187)
And if you don’t have enough time and money, do you have the guts to pick a different, smaller market to conquer? (Location 242)
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. (Location 321)
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. (Location 323)
If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed. And you’ve got to get through that Dip to the other side. This isn’t for everyone. If it were, there’d be no superstars. (Location 330)
MANUFACTURING DIP—It’s easy and fun to start building something in your garage. It’s difficult and expensive to buy an injection mold, design an integrated circuit, or ramp up for large-scale production. (Location 375)
CONCEPTUAL DIP—You got this far operating under one set of assumptions. Abandoning those assumptions and embracing a new, bigger set may be exactly what you need to do to get to the next level. (Location 393)
That’s the goal of any competitor: to create a Dip so long and so deep that the nascent competition can’t catch up. (Location 418)
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. (Location 466)
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. (Location 694)
Figure out how much pressure you’ve got available, then pick your tire. Not too big, not too small. (Location 721)
Who decides what best is? Can we make the world smaller? (Location 744)