Godin - Whatcha gonna do with that duck?: and other provocations, 2006-2012

WHATCHA GONNA DO WITH THAT DUCK?

ALSO BY SETH GODIN

The Icarus Deception

V Is for Vulnerable

Linchpin

Tribes

Meatball Sundae

All Marketers Are Liars

The Dip

Free Prize Inside

Purple Cow

Survival Is Not Enough

Unleashing the Ideavirus

Permission Marketing

Big Red Fez

The Big Moo (editor)

Small Is the New Big

Poke the Box

We Are All Weird

Find them all at sethgodin.com

ALSO BY SETH GODIN

The Icarus Deception

V Is for Vulnerable

Linchpin

Tribes

Meatball Sundae

All Marketers Are Liars

The Dip

Free Prize Inside

Purple Cow

Survival Is Not Enough

Unleashing the Ideavirus

Permission Marketing

Big Red Fez

The Big Moo (editor)

Small Is the New Big

Poke the Box

We Are All Weird

Find them all at sethgodin.com

Seth Godin

COMPILED BY BERNADETTE JIWA

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008 Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Do You Zoom, Inc., 2012

All rights reserved

Stop Stealing Dreams was published as an ebook by the author. The Future Is Arriving appeared on The Domino Project website. The other selections appeared on the authors website.

Photograph: Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Godin, Seth.

Whatcha gonna do with that duck? : and other provocations, 2006-2012 / Seth Godin.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-61235-4

1. Marketing. 2. Management. I. Title.

HF5415.G5784 2013

658dc23 2012036873

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For Helene, always

Thanks to Bernadette Jiwa and Niki Papadopoulos for the herculean task of culling six years worth of writing into this book. I couldnt (and wouldnt) have done it without you.

I dont remember writing most of these posts.

I read them and I shake my head in agreement (most of the time). Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking at the time. But yes, I wrote them, every word, over the course of the last five or six years.

Ive collected them in this handy set not because you can read them more easily during takeoff or landing, or in the tub or at the beach. No, Ive collected them because theres (still) something magical about the linear, permanent nature of a book. Even an ebook feels less evanescent than the disconnected, temporary nature of a blog post.

One of my creative heroes, Gary Larson, was generous enough to let us read the collected Far Side, thousands of brilliant little cartoons connected into permanent volumes. And the experience of reading them is different than the way he intended when he drew them. A cartoon or a blog post emailed to you now and then might break your stride or make you do a double take, but the relentless force of an entire book of them can have a genuine impact on you and those that you care to share with.

I guess that this is the real reason I collected these posts. So those that have been keeping up with the daily blog have a handy tool they can use to proselytize. Hand this to the heathen, see if you can get them to join the tribe.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing. And most of all, thanks for doing difficult work.

Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck?

Were surrounded by people who are busy getting their ducks in a row, waiting for just the right moment.

Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are going to do with that duck is a far more important issue.

Five Years from Now

Assume that:

Hard drive space is free.

Wifi-like connections are everywhere.

Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster.

Everyone has a digital camera.

Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny.

The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now.

Walmarts sales are three times as big as they are now.

Any manufactured product thats more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing.

The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now.

Your current profession will either be gone or be totally different.

What then?