The world is changing. It has already begun.
Some people have already realized this. Some are acting accordingly.
They’re taking action, securing their futures, their families’ futures, and the future of their businesses. They’re already winning.
There’s a book everyone on this list should read. Some of you probably already have (I’ve talked about it before.)
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age (back in stock on Amazon)
What is a Sovereign Individual?
This short summary won’t do it justice, but here goes…
The internet will (it was published in the 90’s) change everything, including the nature of government, violence, nationality, business, and work.
Instead of being “citizens”, the virtual property of whatever nation you were born in, subject to the demands of your “superiors,” more and more people will choose a different path.
They will become sovereign.
The internet already allows this. Anyone can start a business, create a product or service, sell it, and make money. You can do this from anywhere in the world, and nobody can easily stop you.
The book goes very deep into some of the global and political implications of this. I won’t rehash all of it here. Read the book.
But one key point is that Sovereign Individuals more and more will see governments and countries as service providers. The internet makes them globally mobile with no interruption to business. If one government doesn’t give them what they want, more and more they’ll be able to shop around.
Many people don’t understand this…
They think things are always going to be the way they’ve always been.
Nowhere is this more of a problem than in Customer Service.
Customer service, as conventionally practiced, is stuck sorely in the industrial age. The past.
Centralization, bureaucracy, complexity, authoritarianism, inefficiency. Old fashioned performance “metrics” centered more around impressing a boss than delivering actual results.
Offloading of problems, and suffering, from underfunded and overworked teams to frustrated customers who “don’t have any other choice.”
In the age of the Sovereign Individual, this stuff doesn’t work.
It breaks. It requires too much time. It’s too dependent on a single location and the whims of the people in charge there.
And if you’re selling to other Sovereign Individuals, or people on that path, they won’t want to put up with it either.
A customer problem that never happens is ALWAYS better than one you handle, even if handled well.
Customers, all else being equal, prefer to interact with someone who can think, act, make decisions, and deliver results, as opposed to a mindless NPC following a program.
They don’t need immediate replies, they just need to know that any issue will be handled, quickly and effectively. (Most customers who demand 24/7 replies are only that way because conventional industrial age businesses have abused them.)
Independent, sovereign customers don’t want to deal with NPC’s and cubicle slaves. They want to deal with other thinking sovereigns. (Even the cheapest remote customer service agent can and SHOULD be sovereign of his or her domain.)
Sovereign Individuals are a better class of customer.
The idea of a bunch of call center agents sitting in a cubicle warehouse somewhere is equally 20th century…
Sovereign Individuals don’t have the time, or the desire to manage that kind of complexity. Timing piss breaks, dealing with harassment claims, filling out government forms, and all the other hassles that go along with being an “employer” in any given jurisdiction. Being personally responsible for every decision while legions of NPC’s read poorly written scripts.
Some have turned to simple outsourcing to handle this, hiring big Indian call centers to poorly handle repetitive customer complaints for them. But this is almost as short sighted and destined to fail. If a thing shouldn’t be done at all, why would you just pay someone else to do it?
So what’s the alternative? How can Sovereign Individuals ensure happy repeat customers without all the hassles of 20th century “Customer Service?”
That’s what I’ve spent the last few years figuring out. Even before I ever heard of the term Sovereign Individual. Even before I read the book.
The goals were the same even before I understood the motivation.
- Customer service that basically runs itself
- Customers who rarely even need “service” in the conventional sense.
- Not just “low cost”, but actually profitable.
You do that by keeping things simple. You do that by preventing problems before they happen, anticipating problems before your customers have to deal with them.
You do that by remembering 80/20 and focusing your energies where they are most valuable.
I’m going to be writing a lot more about this stuff soon. And I’ve got something coming soon to help a lot more businesses and budding Sovereign Individuals get this stuff right.
If you aren’t already, make sure you’re on the email list (below.) Don’t get stuck in the 20th century.
P.S. The Sovereign Individual was out of stock for quite a while on both Amazon and eBay. Used copies were selling for $70, or more.
Still worth it in my opinion.
But as of the date of this writing, it looks like it’s back in stock on Amazon for only $18. I HIGHLY recommend picking up a copy sooner rather than later if you’re interested in this stuff at all.
This is another one of those books that didn’t tell me a lot I didn’t already know, but it gave me a structure, the framework to build on, like a skyscraper.
Do yourself a favor and read it.
P.P.S This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot likely. And I’ll probably be talking about it on video.
Make sure you follow me on my new YouTube channel for this and other videos.
