Hey there, it’s Mark Mason, your host for the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that I see happening way too often in the world of online business: quitting too soon. This is the most common failure mode that I see when people try to start an online business. I’ve been discussing this for years, but I want to approach it from a different angle today. I want to talk about a book called “The Dip” by Seth Godin.
“The Dip” was published back in 2007, but I recently revisited it thanks to my friend, Aiden Booth. This book provides valuable insights into why people quit too soon and how to recognize when you’re in a dip that’s worth pushing through. The dip is the point where things get tough, and it’s the moment when most people quit. But if you push through the dip, you’ll reach the other side, where the magic happens.
I see so many people get excited about online business opportunities because of some sales pitch that promises riches with just a click of a button. However, once they start doing the work, things don’t go exactly as planned, and they start encountering real-life business challenges. This is when people start to get discouraged and quit before they even reach the dip.
In “The Dip,” Seth Godin argues that there are two choices when you get into a dip: quit and cut your losses or recognize the dip for what it is and push through. He also talks about strategic quitting, where you should accept the dip and quit to work on something more important. But I think the most crucial point is recognizing when you’re in a dip worth pushing through.
I’ve seen so many people quit right before the magic happens. They quit just because they encounter resistance or things aren’t going as smoothly as they expected. But the truth is, building a successful online business takes time and effort. You can’t expect success overnight. You need to push through the dip and keep going until you reach the other side.
I encourage you not to be one of those people who quit too soon. Don’t jump from one program to another, always looking for the next big thing. Instead, recognize that the dip is part of the process and push through it. If you’re committed to building a successful online business, you need to be patient and keep going, even when things get tough.
If you’ve ever experienced a dip in your online business journey but pushed through it and came out on the other side, I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at [email protected], and maybe we can get you on the show to talk about your success story.
Remember, building a successful online business is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t give up too soon, and keep pushing through the dip until you reach the other side.
Show Notes
A lot of people quit before the magic happens and I’ve never really prescribed a course of action around this, besides keep going. But recently, I’ve been reminded of the book called The Dip by Seth Godin. This is not only exactly why people quit too soon, but it also tells you the context in which you should evaluate those feelings when you want to quit, and start over or do something else.
People get excited when they come upon some sales letter in their email inbox or some link that they clicked on Facebook that tells them riches can be theirs. These programs typically cost a lot of money and when you pay for them, you get an endorphin hit. But you can’t get something for nothing and so have to start doing the work.
Typically, things don’t go exactly as planned. In marketing, we don’t usually talk about all of the troubles, difficulties and issues that you have to overcome to be successful. What we talk about are the benefits so when you start to hit resistance and the normal things that you need to take care of, you start to get more and more discouraged. When the excitement wears off and the challenges of real business mount, people start to quit. Sometimes they quit before the refund deadline. They start feeling the dip.
There are two choices when you get in a dip: Quit and cut your losses; or recognize the dip for what it is and push through.
A lot of times in reputable, online marketing courses, we know the business model works so don’t quit just before the magic happens. It’s usually just right after that, or not too long after the magic happens that you start going from the down vector where you feel bad, the results are bad and you’re encountering resistance, to a success vector where the success is mounting, one win causes another win and before you know, it you’ve reached some successful point.
The problem is, a lot of people never get out of that trough.
There are times when you should strategically quit, but the context of that is you should accept the dip and quit to work on something more important. That doesn’t mean something new. If you’ve got two or three things going on and you hit one of these dips, and you know that one of the other things is more promising and more likely to succeed, you should put that energy into the other project so that you can drive out of the dip that the other project is inevitably going to experience.
I want to encourage you to avoid going through another new program every six months or a year, trying something new, trying to find a way to be successful. You need to push through the dip.
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