Godin's central thesis is that in order to be the best in the world, one must quit the wrong stuff and stick with the right stuff. Godin first makes the assertion that 'being the best in the world is seriously underrated,' although he defines the term 'best' as 'best for them based on what they believe and what they know,' and 'world' as 'the world they have access to.' He supports this by illustrating that vanilla ice cream is almost four times as popular as the next-most popular ice cream, further stating that this is seen in Zipf's Law. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.' Godin introduces the book with a quote from Vince Lombardi: 'Quitters never win and winners never quit.' He follows this with 'Bad advice.

In addition to being the basis behind The Dip, the entry was also included in Small is the new Big, a collection of short pieces from his blog. Five months later, Godin posted another entry titled 'Understanding Local Max,' in which he presented another success curve-this time nearly identical to the one that appears in his book-and analyzed the hypothetical conversation that would occur at four points on the curve. And last, how do you know when to kill a dud,' a theme that would reappear in The Dip. He ends the post with 'How do you avoid killing something too early, or celebrating too early. On an entry titled 'The four curves of want and get,' Godin shows four curves representing patterns of adoption. The rough idea for The Dip first materialized on Godin's blog.

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