With all the noise about the NSA snooping, this is an opportunity to become the privacy provider.
You could extreme about it, like move your servers to Iceland or Singapore. (Hey, ATT’s router support is done in Singapore.)

You could teach people about encryption and PGP. There is a plug-in for Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client for OpenPGP. have you seen EnigMail?

Pirate Bay just launched a browser to get around censorship.

Google stated that any 3rd party data is open to examination without an expectation of privacy. You could be the one with a strong piracy policy.

With all the cell phone makers putting in CALEA tunnels (for lack of a better term), the Ubuntu Edge is killing it on Indiegogo.

Now all this encryption and privacy may get you noticed by the government, so here is what it is like to get a National Security letter.

The key is to tell a new story, to set yourself apart, to have that story resonate with your targeted audience (your tribe).

FYI… What the NSA Scandal Means by Lifehacker.

This isn’t a political post. It’s just info. USA Today has a good break down of the Affordable Care Act (occasionally referred to as ObamaCare or RomneyCare).

The Heritage Foundation has the major milestones here.

Open enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace begins on October 1st, 2013. [more from HHS.gov]

From the Patriot News: “Jan. 1, 2014 — Most individuals are required to have health insurance. Those who don’t will face a penalty. In 2014, the penalty will be $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, up to $285 for a family, or one percent of family income (whichever is greater). The penalty will rise to $325 per adult and $162.50 per child in 2015, and $695 per adult and $347.50 per child in 2016 and beyond.”

Jan. 1, 2014 — Insurance plans can no longer refuse to cover anyone because of pre-existing conditions.

US House Ways and Means Committee PDF with details.

The Tampa Bay Rays have one of the lowest attendance rates in major league baseball. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers pre-season game was more than half empty tonight. This will be the third season of TV blackouts.

So what’s the problem?

Is it the product? NFL is at its peak in viewership and revenue. The Rays are winning and in a fight for the AL East, so the product isn’t the product.

Could it be the Customer eXperience? Maybe. Residents do not like the Trop – the Rays indoor stadium. The Bucs experience at club level ($249 per ticket) is quite nice actually. Pricey but nice.

Can it be the price or is it the economy? Rays tickets are cheap but a family of four would spend some money on tickets, parking, food and drink. However, the hockey team – the Lightning – had a great attendance record last year, even with a shortened season due to a labor dispute.

Is there friction preventing ticket sales?

Is it the tribe? Have the owners or the team somehow lost their tribe of fans?

What does this have to do with you?

If your sales aren’t where you want them to be, check the items I listed – price, sales friction, CX, the product itself and the tribe leadership. Your customers – especially your raving fans – are your tribe. Your employees are your tribe. What little things can you do to improve?

BTW, the books I suggested are listed here.

As many of you know, I love Seth Godin. That guy fires up my brain. His book, Tribes, is about how most businesses don’t need millions of customers to be profitable. And it is getting harder to mass market. So the idea is to build up a tribe of raving fans.

A recent blog post of his was titled Perhaps You Should Just Make Something Awesome. Simple, right? Simple but difficult. I take it to mean: design a bundle of services specifically targeted to your tribe.

The flipside to that is that not everyone will need it, but those that do will jump on it.

Here are the ingredients for building a tribe:

ONE: You need a Story about your value to them. Not about the tech, but about the Outcome or the pain that you will remove. Think about a drug commercial. It takes about the disease, then it says ask your doctor for our drug. Then it mentions a thousand side effects. Skip that part.

TWO: Targets. Who do you want to target? Who would most benefit from your high margin services? Talk to them. Design for them. Write for them. (You can have more than one tribe.)

Know everything about your tribe, so that you can provide extra value. For example, know everything about healthcare technology, what the FCC is doing, what others are doing, tele-medicine, rural healthcare, HIPAA, etc. That way you can share it with your healthcare tribe. Bring in experts to interview, podcast, blog about, or have on a webinar or lunch-n-learn.

THREE: Tactics to Hit target. Where do they hang out? What do they read? What associations do they belong to? Is there a LinkedIn or Meetup.com group that they belong to? Be there too. Pharma companies are always holding dinners for doctors at Ocean Prime and Capital Grill in Tampa. If that was my target, I would be in the bar early and late. Or I would rent a room too, put up a sign outside the door on an easel, and have a meeting about healthcare tech and federal dollars.

Social media – Facebook, twitter, blogging, forums, Google Plus – are great tools for communicating with your tribe – and getting your tribe to interact with each other. Connect them together and they will never forget you.

So there are this many phones sold already.