Transcription
I've actually never told anyone this before, but I almost quit YouTube in early 2024 because I was so frustrated by trying so hard and the lack of results. And in December 2024, I hit 100,000 subscribers. I didn't quit because of this book. I was at a bookstore with a friend, and I picked it up because I love Seth Goden. And I stood in that bookstore aisle, and I read the entire book front to back. It's a very short book, and that book is the reason I decided to keep going on YouTube.
So, what this book talks about is this graph right here, which Seth Goden calls the dip. What Seth says is, everything worth doing in life is controlled by the dip. So mastering the dip is extremely important if you want to get what you want out of life. So let's talk about it. You know how whenever you start a new thing, like a new business, a side hustle, a passion project, uh, a new job, a new hobby, anything like that, it kind of looks like this graph on the screen, right? Like you're super excited in the beginning, you're super hyped, you're getting some initial results just because you're starting, the momentum is going, and then you hit this long slog of like, oh, I have to keep doing the work now. The results aren't really happening yet. Like, I'm not really seeing anything happening. This sucks. Is this worth it? Blah, blah, blah. Should I quit? Should I keep going? The dip can look like years of building an audience, creating products and services, learning, failing, experimenting, trying lots of different strategies before you hit off your breakout, like success as a business with making content. It can look like weeks or months or years of making content that nobody ever sees before you make it through that moment, the breakthrough moment of, oh, she's had an overnight success, which we both know is not the case.
Now, the thing that I love about this book is Seth is saying the dip isn't actually a sign of failure. It's actually proof that you're on the right path, but only if you're pushing through the right dip. So Seth says, essentially, people have three big problems: one, not sticking with the right thing for long enough; two, sticking with the wrong thing for way too long and wasting their time; and three, trying to do absolutely everything. After this video, you'll know exactly when you should be pushing through and when you should quit.
All right, so the first thing that came out of this book that completely changed my perspective on the dip that I was in was, I mean, for a long time, I thought the dip was the enemy. I was like, the dip sucks. But the lesson that I took out of this book that completely changed my perspective was that the dip is actually on your side. Like, the dip is your best friend in most things that are worth doing. And now, what I see it as is the dip is essentially the audition for the real thing. I'm not ready to have that thing yet, and the dip is the audition that's preparing me to have that thing. So, examples: in 2021, I wasn't ready, honestly, and skilled enough to have 10,000 subscribers here on YouTube. I just wasn't good enough. My skills weren't good enough. I didn't understand enough about packaging, about thumbnails, about intros, about how to get people to stay and watch my videos for as long as possible. I mean, there's lots still that I don't know, and there's so much we can still improve. But in 2021, especially, I was not skilled enough to have 10,000 subscribers. The dip is essentially what forced me to invest and learn and go all in on YouTube and be like, I need to figure out exactly what the skill of YouTube requires. And then I paid for trainings, I hired mentors, I spent so many hours studying YouTube. And then slowly, I was like, okay, I feel like the skill is more and more concrete in my mind now, and I feel like I'm getting better at the YouTube videos, right?
Another example: in 2016, I was nowhere near ready or skilled enough to build a six-figure business. I just had no clue. I had no work experience. I didn't know all the different intricacies of what business actually took and what it could look like. Then I went and freelanced for 40-plus freelance clients. That was behind the scenes of all of their businesses. I saw exactly how they created products, validated products, drove traffic, how they nurtured their leads, how they got sales, their selling systems. I saw everything. And in 2020, I had essentially become skilled enough and good enough to build a six-figure business. And then my business hit six figures. When it comes to freelancing, in 2016, I was just not ready or skilled enough to manage seven-figure businesses for my clients yet. But after experience, after learning, after building my skill set, in 2019, I was. And I held my client scale to seven figures, and that was when I started managing seven-figure businesses and helping clients scale to seven figures. So I feel like the dip had my back, honestly, because I wasn't ready to have that thing yet. And I think it would have been too overwhelming to have that thing that early on when I wasn't skilled enough to know how to get there or maintain it once I had it.
Another thing that completely shifted my perspective is without the dip, there would be no scarcity of the reward you're trying to get to. If it were just smooth sailing, like if it was not like this and it was just smooth across, that means tons of people would be making it through. That means tons of people would have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Everybody would have a six-figure business. It means everyone would have exactly what you want. And the thing is, when everyone has it, the scarcity of it is lower, the rarity of it is lower, and we value it less, right? We value things that are hard to attain. We value things that not everybody has. Essentially, you can see it as the dip is weeding out the people who don't actually want that thing bad enough to do the work that you are doing every day. People are quitting. And this is really reassuring to me. Every day, people are quitting. But if you truly care about getting to where you want to go, if you feel a deep calling to get to where you want to go, you're not going to quit.
The third thing is the dip is the shortcut. And I love that Seth Goden says this because I think often times we think the hard work path is the hardest path, and that there must be secret hacks or strategies or tricks or like secret things that experts know that we don't know. And there must be ways to like get around doing the hard work. And Seth says the shortest way to get to where you want to go is through the dip. You know that saying like, the only way out is through?
So, the first dip survivor, of course, me. And this is a graph of our YouTube channel growth. But you can see this graph also in my career with freelancing, with my business, with my other business, with my clients' businesses. It is so common. Like, growth is not linear in the way that we often think. Often, I feel like we have to get to this point of where enough mass has like accrued, and then we just like hit that breaking point where like the switch is flipped on to be like, okay, there's enough there, so now you can go on and do all this stuff.
So here are my biggest lessons of getting through the dip. And it's also possible that another dip will come, and another dip will come. Whenever there's a dip, it's just an opportunity to learn more and to get better at whatever it is I'm doing. Number one is, you have to have a very, feel a very deep calling on the inside to do what you are actually trying to do. So with starting a business, I felt a really deep calling. Starting freelancing, I felt such a deep calling. I was like, there is no other path. This is my path. I have to do this. Even if there are like layers of doubts and imposter syndromes and fear of failure and fear of success, perfectionism, all of that on top of that, inside, in the core, your gut feeling, there has to be a deep calling. Like, I think this is what I was meant to do. I think that is the only thing that will get you through the dip, honestly. Because I think external motivators are useful, but they are not as strong as the deep internal calling that you might feel to do something. I also think that's why if your only motivator to do something is make tons of money, you just won't get through the dip. Most of the time, there's such a long period where you are not making any money, and you're like, this is a huge waste of time and money and energy.
The next lesson I will say is, small improvements that nobody else can notice except you are all that matters. And I know in the beginning, it's very tempting to be like, nothing is happening, there's no progress. When you start something, everyone's like, oh my gosh, you started so good. And then the dip happens, and nobody's saying anything, right? You're just like, kind of doing the work on your own. It's like quiet for years. With business, with YouTube, I was grinding away, learning, improving. Those little, like, tiny, not even 1% improvements, like 0.1% improvements where nobody else could notice even what I was learning. And I was like, no, but I noticed. Like, my intro is like a little bit better. That's all that matters. Because if you are getting a little bit better every day, you are going to be in a completely different place in one year. It's not about where you are, it's about your direction. If you're headed in a good direction, your trajectory is good, inevitably you will get where you want to go.
All right, my third lesson is a big one, and I think it's that we all underestimate how long it takes to actually get good at something. There is so much to starting a business, building a successful business, being able to maintain a six-figure business. That's also very important. The dip is the audition that ensures you know how to maintain success once you get it, and not just you had a viral blowout thing, you made it to six figures one year, and now you have no clue the systems, the people, the product, the services, the fulfillment that you need to maintain a six-figure business.
The next dip survivor I want to talk about is Sabrina Carpenter, because she took so long to have her breakthrough, her overnight success. So she actually started making YouTube covers back in 2009. She joined Disney and Hollywood Studios in 2012, and her first song to chart on Billboard Hot 100 was in 2021. So that was after nine years of being signed to a record label. You can see her, like, interest based on Google Trends. And now, I mean, we all know Sabrina Carpenter has took off this year. So, yeah, good for her. I mean, she grinded through the dip. She was probably deeply passionate about singing, about dancing, about all of this stuff. Sometimes I think the dip has your back in the way where when nothing is happening, you are more open into experimentation and trying a bunch of random things to be like, okay, I have nothing to lose, let me just try a bunch of stuff. Potentially, the dip allowed her to be like, let's just try whatever we need to, like, figure out something to make me stand out. And then she got great branding. Maybe she hired a stylist, I don't know. But yeah, good for her, she made it through the dip.
So, what's the takeaway here? What's the task? What's the actionable thing? Because I'll always give you the actionable thing. It is to prepare and anticipate for the dip. So Seth says, knowing that you are facing a dip is the first step to getting through it. I love that. So make it as bearable as you can. So here are some of my ideas. One, celebrate every small win, even if you're just celebrating by yourself. Maya, pull up our YouTube Notion and show them our small wins. So you can see, I celebrated every single small win when I started YouTube. Make one video, get one subscriber. Also, if you can lean into it, you are doing the fastest way to get to where you want to go. You are on the journey. You have begun, which I mean, most people don't even begin.
And another thing is, going through a dip sometimes is a little bit lonely. So surround yourself with other people who are doing the work. You see the work that they're doing, you're like, they're doing such a good job. Like, I don't understand why they don't have results yet. Surround yourself with those people because chances are, they are going to get results soon. They're the ones that are doing the heavy learning, and they can share their learning with you. So examples: I had tons of calls and little masterminds with other people who are going through YouTube dips. I'm in a Discord full of other small writers that I think are extremely talented. I am in a lot of small communes for business owners. Um, when I was starting my business, I had a business business accountability buddy where we were both trying to do things at the same time. And also, very important reminder, nobody can ever take your skills away from you. Talking to one of my business mentors a few years ago, and I was like, oh, one of these like irrational fears I have in my business is, what if the business goes bankrupt and I have to close the business? And she's like, you know what, Dea, the business is not the X factor. You are the X factor. You will just use your X factor to start a new business. Nobody can ever take your skills away from you. That is like the best investment you can make in your biggest asset in life.
You, okay, now you might be asking, but Dea, should I just be grinding away at everything then? No. So Seth actually says, winners quit all the time. It's a common misconception that like winners just grind and grind and grind until it works, but not true. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. And I love that he talks about this in this book specifically. He talks about how to know exactly when to quit. So we put together some questions to ask yourself to differentiate between good and bad quitting. So number one is, what I kind of said already earlier, do you feel deeply called to do something? If you feel it on the inside, like your heart is like, this is what you're meant to be doing, I know it's hard, but this is, this feels right. Like you enjoy learning about it, you enjoyed almost aspects of it. That is a good sign that potentially don't emotionally just quit something in a bad moment. Give yourself a little break, come back to it, talk to somebody about it, don't quit yet.
And has it popped up as a semi-regular pattern or idea in your life? For example, with starting my own business, it popped up regularly for me in a very scary way. I was always like, every time it popped up, I was like, I could never do that. I could never do that. I could never do that. But it kept recurring as a thought to me over and over and over.
Next, do you love the process of doing it? And I say the word process very intentionally because oftentimes I think we enjoy the process of doing something, and then the results come or they don't come, and that impacts how we feel about the whole thing. And that's something I've been doing recently is separating the process of making YouTube videos and the results of making YouTube videos. Because a lot of times, I mean, most of the time, I greatly enjoy the process of making YouTube videos, of making content, brainstorming ideas, um, structuring content, creating educational content. But then the results come or don't come, and then they impact how I felt about this. But this is completely separate from this.
Another question is, is it hard in a good way or a bad way? Right? Like hard in a good way is like, oh my God, like it's like YouTube, YouTube is so hard, but for me, it's in a good way because I love learning about YouTube. I find it very interesting. But hard in a bad way is like, you feel it on the inside, you're like shriveled up on the inside, you're like, I hate this and I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. That potentially would be something to quit.
Will quitting free up time for a better opportunity? What is the opportunity cost of not quitting? So if you are just grinding away at something you hate, you're like, I wish I could spend my time on this other thing that potentially could be a better fit for what I want to do. Also, are you not quitting solely because you've already put too much work in money into it? Right? Sunk cost fallacy. Oh, I've already put in three years into this thing, I can't just quit now. It is okay to change your mind about something.
Now, here is a quitter example of a very strategic, very good quitter, Bridget Mendler. Which, if anybody else grew up watching her on Disney Channel. So the loss of her quitting her acting career on Disney Channel is, she potentially lost a successful singing and acting career, right? But she won so much out of quitting that path and going for a completely different path. She got a law degree from Harvard. She was a PhD student at MIT. She started a company. I mean, she is so successful now in a completely different way. And potentially, she could have gone through the thought process of, but I've already spent years like studying acting, studying singing, I already have a successful Disney Channel show, like I should just keep going down this path. But evidently, that was not the path for her. So she changed her mind.
So the actionable task here is to talk yourself into quitting, right? So determination alone will not get you through the dip. I have tried it. You have to evaluate how bad you want the thing that's on the other end of the dip. So a concept that I love from the book as well is writing a quitting contract. So write down a list of the challenges you know you will face and determine your boundaries that you're not willing to cross around time, money, mental health, peace. So it can look like this, right? I promise to make X number of YouTube videos over the X years, given my boundaries. That's exactly what I did with YouTube. I said, I want to make 50 to 100 YouTube videos in one year. And then challenges: I will probably face getting 10 views after spending 4,826 hours on one video. It still happens. Um, not seeing the results as quickly as I want. Not liking how I look in videos. Not liking how I sound in videos. So writing down all the challenges that you know will probably you will probably come up against. And also ensuring you have boundaries. So my boundaries are like, if I absolutely hate it for an extended period of time, quit it. If I have to sacrifice my mental health and peace, it's not worth it, etc., etc. So I love that idea because then it's not just, I will grind away at this thing forever, no matter what happens. No, it's like, no, I'm not going to grind away at it forever. I'm making a commitment. I know what I'm going to come across. I know what like challenges I can anticipate, and I have the boundaries in place to ensure that it's not actually going to sacrifice anything that is truly important to me.
And another quote I love from this book: If you can't make it through the dip, don't start. And he's not saying this in a discouraging way. He's saying it in a way where if you're not, if you don't actually want the thing that bad, just don't even spend your time doing this thing. Be strategic about your time because we have finite time and energy. Pick things that actually make sense and that you feel a deep calling for. So the important thing here is to look for the dip. Look for what type of curve you are in. This is normally a good sign. Progress may be slow, but you know that there is potential. If you see any trace of progress, chances are you are in the dip and you see potential for it. That's good.
Now, there are two other different curves here. He calls it a cul-de-sac. Cul-de-sac is where it's just a dead end. Like nothing is happening, no matter how hard you try, you're stuck in an endless loop, zero progress. It's probably not the right thing to keep grinding away at. A cul-de-sac will essentially not get better no matter how hard you try. The dip has potential to get better. And then there's another one he calls the cliff. Cliff is essentially the short-term situation is probably fine, but but it will, and you know inevitably, there will be bad results.
Now, let's move on to lesson three. Lesson three is, you cannot do everything. And I know this is a really annoying lesson, but spreading yourself too thin is a disservice to you. So what Seth says, and I mean, we know this, is it's much easier, especially career-wise, to be really good at one specific thing. And I completely agree. For example, comparing a YouTube channel that's about cooking, all things cooking. Imagine starting that YouTube channel, like, just about you talk about all things cooking. That would be so much harder to get traction with versus if you feel deeply passionate about like medieval cooking, and you start a channel about medieval cooking. That is like super niche, and you can easily become the best person at medieval cooking, and you will be that girl or that guy, right? Or, you know, for example, real example, imagine you are a YouTube video editor, period. Versus, you are a YouTube video editor that specializes in doing aesthetic, cutesy editing. If you carve out a little niche market, chances are there are enough people to sustain a very healthy livelihood for you. It's much easier to try to resonate 100% with your people versus resonate 20% with everyone. We do not want to resonate a little bit with everyone. We want to resonate 100% for our person.
So, other lesson is to make a decision. Experiment first, yes, but once you have enough data, make a decision. Even the wrong decision is better than making no decision and being stuck in overanalysis. Because the wrong decision gives you the data you need to make better decisions in the future. You can almost see it kind of like a Venn diagram. What can you be the best in? Right? Let's say you want to be a freelance social media manager. Okay, that is very hard to compete with. Social media manager means you're competing with, I want to say hundreds of thousands of social media managers. But if you're a social media manager in Berlin, okay, that's more niche. Now, social media manager for cafes in Berlin, bam. You can easily become the best social media manager for cafes in Berlin if you chose to do that.
So the task here is, you have to strategically explore your passions. The first thing is to make a list of everything you enjoy and you don't enjoy. Don't overthink it, just write it down. It can be anything. It can be also not even related to your career. And then set time constraints for yourself to try each thing out. So maybe it's like, every quarter, you create a commitment goal, like the quitting contract. You write a quitting contract for each thing, and you try it out. You give it the full go. And then once you find that thing, that thing that calls to you, that deep down you're like, this is my thing, stick with that thing. Give it the full go. Let go of everything else and go in on that thing. Knowing that if you are in the dip and you don't see the results yet, the results are coming. They are inevitable. That's something else that helps me a lot is knowing that the results are inevitable if I'm learning, if the trajectory is right, and all that stuff.
Now, if you enjoyed this video, you'll probably also enjoy my video about 4,000 Weeks, which is one of the best, no, it's the best productivity book I've ever read. And as always, thank you so much for watching, and I hope to catch you in the next one. Okay, bye. Yay, bye.