Like a Sledgehammer

Interesting blog post by business writer Seth Godin.

....lots of organizations end up hitting a wall with no warning.

He goes on to explain that each year, despite having a clean record, his car insurance went up. He believes that organizations do this quite often: Squeeze the lemon and if the lemon keeps producing juice, squeeze it a little more. He also believes we reach that point, the breaking point, and for a business this can be fatal.

Something in my relationship with the insurance company shattered. After all, it's not like they had done anything for me, not like I knew anyone there. It was just momentum. And the number was suddenly enough to make me take action.

19 minutes later, I was at Geico.

He is but one person, but during this time how can he be the only one?

When you hit the breaking point with one person, it might be 1,000 or 100,000 people who do the same thing at the same time. And you don't get a second chance. They're gone.

You can stretch a rubber band for a long time. But then it breaks.

That puts our 40% decline in wagering into a better perspective than I ever could.