Table Of Content

SETH GODIN Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? And Other Provocations, 2006–2012 COMPILED BY BERNADETTE JIWA PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN Contents Foreword Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? INTRODUCTION: MAY 2004 NOW WAS ALWAYS A GOOD TIME TO START: OPPORTUNITY. CHOOSING AND DOING. PICKING YOURSELF. CARE MORE THAN THE COMPETITION: RESPECT AND AUTHENTICITY. TELLING STORIES AND SPREADING IDEAS: MARKETING. SUCCESS, FAILURE, AND THE SURE THING: DOING THE WORK. RISK AND FEAR. STANDING OUT AND FITTING IN: BEING REMARKABLE. NEW WORLD ORDER: CHANGE. CONNECTION. TACTICS. THE FUTURE IS ARRIVING: PUBLISHING. PAPER. PLATFORMS AND GATEKEEPERS. STOP STEALING DREAMS (WHAT IS SCHOOL FOR?) 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 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 couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have done it without you. I don’t 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. I’ve 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, I’ve collected them because there’s (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? We’re 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. Introduction: May 2004 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. Walmart’s sales are three times as big as they are now. Any manufactured product that’s 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?