Have you been reading Seth’s book-promo-blog, The Dip? As someone who feels stuck in a couple ‘dips’ (and don’t we all?), I’ve eagerly followed along. (In short, ‘the dip’ is the point between ‘good’ and ‘great’.) Heck, I’m a Seth fanboy.
Seth sent out a request for ‘quitters’, those who got out of a dip and forged a new destination of greatness. I suggested Alton Brown, whom I am also a fanboy of (currently blogging Feasting On Asphalt 2 for you other fanboys/girls). Alton quit being a cameraman/producer to go to cooking school specifically so he could make a show like Good Eats (with video sample).
Interestingly enough, AB has a diagram of ‘the dip’ in his baking book, which I just completed reading, which is what I really wanted to share with Seth. AB’s point was slightly different:
“Why take any journey? Why did the chicken cross the road? Because in moving from one place to another, we learn something about both. Maybe you’re not the kind of person who needs to know how things work, but if you have your eyeballs on this page, I’m betting you are. And people like us tinker—that’s how we find things out. For me, following the trail from pizza to brioche just shows the lay of the land. Seeing how everything is connected rather than just following directions makes me a better cook.”
That’s why they call him a ‘cooking geek’. And I think it applies 100% to becoming a ‘marketing geek’. We need to cross the ‘lake of doubt’ to arrive at the ‘plane of understanding’.
Longtime readers may recall, I’ve connected AB to Seth’s principles before, when I talked about ‘Edgecraft’ as described in Seth’s book The Free Prize. Apparently I love making these connections.
Tomorrow: A closer look at the book, The Dip (I got a preview copy for sending in AB as a quitter.)