25 May 2007, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Projects, Thought & Theory, 6 Comments

What am I Going to Quit Today?

Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to Seth Godin speak about his new book, the Dip. As the person who seeded the original idea to bring him to Salt Lake and an active member of the volunteer group that made it happen, WordMob, I thought I was familiar with the book’s gist. However, after hearing an hour and a half worth of elaboration I have a lot to think about today.

While the book’s tag line of “winners do quit, and quitters do win” is attention grabbing it doesn’t tell the whole story. Seth’s argument is really against making a business average through horizontal stratification – that is, doing a lot of different things only semi-successfully instead of focusing on one area and growing the business vertically. By finding this area, or niche, and completely owning it one can gain a cumulative advantage that only increases dominance over time. The Dip, as Seth has labeled it, is that point at which more effort, time, and/or money must be summoned to become an area leader. It is at this point which a person must honestly evaluate the cost verses benefit. If the cost of becoming a leader is too great Seth argues that one must immediately quit and move onto to something where one can be great. To not do so is to expend resources in a futile effort – resources that could have been better used somewhere else.

When I got home I pulled up a mindmap I had made of Vox Pop Design’s ‘experiments’. Vox Pop Design (the web development part) has always been about serving as a money making arm so that I could be free to play with new technology and business ideas. In the mind map below the ‘bubble’ items represent projects that I haven’t started yet but had intended to try in the next six months.

After yesterday there are several items I’m examining. An example is the MilitantGeek T-shirt experiment I launched last year (and blogged about here). It was a fun project and I learned some new skills. I added a blog in order to help build ’stickiness’. Since last September I have let the T-shirt portion of the site stagnate while continuing to spend considerable time updating the blog with the pithiest tech news I could find. To apply Seth’s talk to the project I need to make decisions: is MilitantGeek going to be the best geek t-shirt business, the best technology infotainment site, or should I stop trying to be an average hybrid and shut the doors? If it does continue do I have what it takes to push through the dip and make the site a leader in the field that I choose?

MilitantGeek isn’t alone. Quickly scanning from the upper right and going clockwise it would appear that I’m well on my way of being an average jack-of-all trades and master of none:

• I’ve spent time this week ‘talent scouting’ in order to allow Vox Pop’s Hollywood Model to diversify beyond ColdFusion projects. I now wonder if moving that direction makes Vox Pop just an average web-dev ‘we can do it all’ shop instead of a great ColdFusion one. Further, I’m not even sure that being the best CF firm is what I want to do – can I be the best in the world there or do I need to find another niche?
• The intention with ‘code resources’, like ColdSparx, was to assert authority as a leading ColdFusion shop. However, there is a huge difference between writing code for oneself (or clients) and creating a usable product flexible enough for the masses. Is this taking time away from other efforts?
• After enjoying video blogs (or ‘vlogs’) for quite some time I really wanted to do something so that I could play in that space. I need to ask myself whether simply ‘playing’ can justify the time and effort taken from other interests.
• The canned storefront was going see how well taking an off the shelf ecommerace platform and applying it to a small gaming community would work. Interesting, for sure, but if I’m not interested in devoting the time to make something best-in-class for the community will it just end up like MilitantGeek? Something that saunters along and consuming resources?
• Neopops.com was going to be a blog/community for the ‘new dad culture’ launching on Father’s day. However, rather than launching yet another blog perhaps it would be better to focus on making the existing Opinuendo better. Either that, or one of the existing sites should probably be shuttered (even if temporarily) so that what’s there stops been ordinary and starts being great.
• Finally, there were a number of brainstormed writing projects – ebooks, language guides, etc. that would be vehicles for playing with self publishing. I need to re-evaluate their place supporting the larger end goals.

Doing analysis like this isn’t fun -something that is exactly the point of what Seth was talking about. We need to stop thinking about quitting projects as a sort of ‘moral failure’. We need to think of it as a natural, iterative process leading to better uses of our time. Seth’s talk yesterday wasn’t just good – it was applicable. That little difference is huge.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have projects to evaluate.