By Charles Euchner
"Winners never quit, and quitters never win."
So sayeth Vince Lombardi, the god of knucklehead, win-at-all-cost sports ideologues.
The slogan appeals to us because of its simplicity, but also because of its deep vein of moralism. It fits the credo of the American Dream, the idea that a willingness to sweat and persevere separates winners from losers. It contains optimism's sunshine ("You, too, can win if you just work harder") and the realist's wariness ("Hey, kiddo, if you haven't made it, you haven't worked hard enough").
But as Seth Godin writes in his provocative little self-help book The Dip, winners quit all the time. Winners know how to judge whether they're going to thrive with an activity -- or whether they would be better off devoting their limited time to some other activity. If you have a chance to thrive, by all means, stick to it. But if you don't have a chance to be the best, you ought to quit.
Be the best? How many can be the best?
As Godin notes, a lot of people can be the best in the fragmented, niche-oriented world we live in today. If we competed in the big categories of the mass market, only a few people could be the best. If we think in terms of the mass market, only one person can be the best actor, or singer, or athlete, or investor, or teacher, or writer. Of course, deciding the "best" in some huge universe is a totally subjective process. Would you say Denzel Washington? Or Meryl Streep? Michael Caine? Cate Blanchette? Who knows? We could make a list of 20 or more actors and pick randomly from that list.
But if we think of "micro" markets, it's easier to identify the best. You could talk about best for movies, TV, and stage; men, women, and children; dramatic, comic, tragic, experimental, improv; New York and London; Broadway and off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway; pop and classical approaches; character actors and method actors; action and introspective roles. On and on, we could divide the mega category -- acting -- into countless distinct sub-categories.
It would be easier to make judgments about these categories. and it would be easier to strive to be the best at a sub-category than the whole universe.
The rewards of being the best are exponentially greater than the rewards of being just "good" or "pretty good." In Hollywood, they call it the star system. But it works in all fields -- publishing, politics, photography, psychotherapy, punditry, academe, the law, medicine, research -- and all of the countless subfields of these professions -- the superstars make manyfold the money and fame of the stars. The stars, in turn, make manyfold the money and fame of the competent many.
The reason is simple. When people are looking for recommendations, they ask for the best. Someone who gets the reputation as the best gets more traffic than she can handle. And because of supply and demand, the best can set the price about as high as she wants. High prices only enhance the mystique.
So what does this say about the necessity of quitting?
As Seth Godin notes, most of us try all kinds of professions and activities over the course of our lives. A lawyer, for example, might try a big and a small firm, a range of different specializations, litigation or deal-making, big-city and small-town practices, corporate or nonprofit work . . . .on and on, the choices are endless.
The trick is to quit the ones that don;t work, the ones where you cannot be the best.
All kinds of smart people are slaving away, competently, without getting the reward they may deserve. By following the Protestant ethic of hard work, sacrifice, and delayed gratification, they dig themselves deeper into a career groove. They might get a decent paycheck, occasional pats on the back, and the satisfaction of an honest day's work.
But maybe that's exactly the path that subjects them to the status of second-class citizen. Maybe, they should realize that quitting a decent job is the best way to find the way to superstardom.
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That's Godin's lesson. Whatever you do, figure out the niche where you can be Number One. Don;t sell yourself as a "photographer." Don't even sell yourself as a technically superior photographer. Sell yourself as the Number One photographer of (a) a subject, (b) style, (c) sector, (d) city, and (e) price. In that niche, you'll develop a mystique. People will beat a path to your door. And you can set your own terms.
But first, you have to have the courage to quit everything else.
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