Announcing CloudTekU!

We have been up to many exciting things this year. Near the top of the list is our new partnership with Kevin Jackson and the beginning of CloudTek University. Jackson’s strong reputation in the cloud and government space and our state-of-the art training and education platform made our decision to partner a no-brainer.

The cloud is a very dynamic and interesting space. It continues to evolve everyday and in our day-to-day lives, we continue to use it more and more. Everything from your phone, your car, to the wearable technology you have on your wrist uses the cloud in some way.  As the cloud effects all of us, it is important that we all have a basic knowledge of the cloud. No longer is the knowledge just beneficial to the IT guy at the office, it is important for anyone that comes into contact with it.

Basic knowledge such as types of cloud services, what kind of information of yours goes the cloud, and how you can protect yourself against security threats you can all learn in our academy. We also have certification prep for basics, cloud leaders, cloud technologies, and much more.

All of these learning paths delivered on a platform that allows students to connect with each other, ask questions to their instructors, earn points and badges, all while learning.

Why not sign up today? We are even offering a FREE 3-day trial. It is that easy. Join us today at cloudteku.com. We look forward to learning together.

 

How to Develop Your Own Unique Leadership Style

Often the first step that leads to a successful enterprise is the “big” idea. Entrepreneurs bring their idea to life by putting together a team of people. Successful entrepreneurs are able to do so by successfully executing their idea. As they begin to hire their team, they start moving toward becoming a leader. And at this point, their success relies heavily on their leadership skills.

 

As you begin developing your own unique leadership style, here’s a list of the most common types / styles. Often, you will need to use a combination of these depending on your situation. No style works effectively in isolation.

 

Visionary

This type of leadership style sets the tone and direction for the company, empowering people with a crystal clear vision, so they can figure out their course on how they will get there. The goal is to mobilize people to a set of shared goals.

 

Coaching

This style of leadership works with a team that wants to grow professionally and has initiative. It’s a one-on-one style that uses questions to reach desired solutions.

 

Democratic

This style draws on people’s strengths and knowledge, by creating a commitment to the goals. This is used when there is no clear cut vision and the leadership needs to tap into the collective expertise of the team.

 

Affiliative

The affiliative leadership style takes on a collaborative approach by creating harmony and connecting team members to each other in order to reach the shared goal.
This style helps improve team harmony, increase employee morale, improves communication and boosts trust throughput the organization.

 

Commanding

This is the classic ‘military’ style of leadership. This is the least effective of all styles. It focuses on criticism rather than praise. It is limited in effectiveness for most situations.

 

If you are interested in learning how to build your own effective team, check out Entrepreneurs Team Course in Brad Sugars Business Academy for more insights and topics to help you hone your leadership skills and build a winning team, so you are able to achieve more than a single champion possibly can. In the Entrepreneurs Team Course, you will also learn the 6 Steps to a Winning Team, a unit that you can immediately apply to your business. After all, to be a successful entrepreneur, you will need a team of highly skilled, resourceful people with a set of shared goals.

 

Maximizing Profitability Through Customer Retention

Customer retention has a huge impact on maximizing the profitability of your business.
By increasing customer satisfaction, you have the enormous opportunity to increase sales to existing customers, thereby greatly reducing the cost of sales and marketing.

This allows you to retain customers for a longer period of time, thereby positively impacting your sales and marketing.

You can also increase customer retention by offering what is valuable to your customers so they keep coming back for more.

Lifetime Customer Value

The longer customers remain loyal to you, the more valuable they become to your business. One of the concepts you will learn about in the Entrepreneur Business Model Course is the lifetime value of a customer.  This metric helps you understand just that -the lifetime value of a customer as it measures the impact of customer satisfaction on long-term profitability.

Brad Sugars believes the lifetime value of a customer is perhaps the most important metric for an entrepreneur. This is because once you know how much repeat business you can expect from a customer, you will be able to make sound decisions about how much you are willing to spend in order to “buy” a new customer.

Here’s how you can calculate this metric.

The simplest and best way to estimate lifetime value is to use actual (or estimated) numbers into the following equation:

(Average Value of a Sale) X (Number of Repeat Transactions) X (Average Retention Time in Months or Years for a Typical Customer)

Let’s say, we are measuring the the lifetime value of a club member who spends $50 every month for 2 years. The value of that customer would be:

$50 X 12 months X 2 years = $1,200 in total revenue (or $600 per year)

In todays world, with an increased use of social networking sites, it has become even more critical to focus on great customer service and these channels can be used to augment customer loyalty and retention.

At the Brad Sugars Business Academy, you will learn this concept in greater detail in Entrepreneur Business Model Course.

Brad will show you his formula and method for calculating the lifetime value of a customer and help you do this exercise in the context of your own business. He will also explain in detail the concepts of allowable acquisition cost and investment acquisition cost so you can master this concept and apply it successfully to your own business.

How to Buy, Fix and Flip Businesses for a Profit

An alternative to starting your own business from scratch is to buy an existing business.

Many entrepreneurs have done this profitably. Brad Sugars is one such entrepreneur, who has an eye for businesses that can be fixed and flipped over for a profit. A serial entrepreneur, Brad has fixed and flipped over thousands of underperforming businesses and sold them for a profit.

The biggest advantage of this method is the ability to limit your own risk, while leveraging the existing resources of the business, like its current customer base.

Here are some guidelines to consider while buying an existing business.

The business has problems but is still surviving: Sure you’ve spotted a business with bad service, terrible presentation and chaotic management, but make sure it’s still able to survive despite all these issues.

Doesn’t require a highly skilled workforce: The idea here is to look for a simple business that can be run on low skills. A business that sells things, people usually buy and doesn’t require any high-level skills.

Generates Cashflow: Don’t worry about the plant, equipment or other depreciating assets -make sure you focus on the cashflow. Buy a business for its cashflow not its assets.

Produces inferior sales and marketing materials: This is one area that you can easily fix, so it’s a great potential opportunity to look out for. You can easily improve marketing that you are able to track. Additionally, the existing customer base can be effectively marketed to for repeat business.

Assess the potential of the business using benchmarks: In order to assess its potential, get some benchmarking done. For instance, analyze the numbers and see what capacity it’s currently running at and by how much you will be able to improve it to sell the business at a profit.

Don’t fall for the business -fall for the deal: Finally, is it a great deal? Your ability to turnaround the business and sell it for a profit greatly relies upon how much you pay for the business.

At the Brad Sugars Business Academy,you will learn this concept in greater detail. Brad will show you how to spot the right business you can buy, fix, and sell for a profit.

All his concepts in “The Entrepreneur Mindset Course” are based on his own real world experiences over the past two decades buying and selling businesses in a variety of industries and economic cycles.

Customer Service Is the New Marketing

Southwest Airlines prides itself as the #1 Customer Service Company.

The airline is famous for the line, “We like to think of ourselves as a Customer Service company

that happens to fly airplanes.”

Today’s customer is an information hog. Before doing business with you, they will find out

everything they can about your company –as information is easily available on the internet. The

internet has made it ever more difficult for companies that do not offer great customer service to

even stay in business.

So how do you provide the most amazing customer experience so they keep coming back for

more.

It’s important to start from within –how can you create a culture in your company that screams

customer service?

For this to happen, your entire team right from accounting to marketing need to embrace the

idea of customer service –not just your front-line team.

In order to create this culture, you also need to understand what your customers want.

Yes, customers want a personal touch; they want to be treated right; and they want a seamless

experience.

But what they also want is transparency.

So how do you become an organization with complete transparency?

You can achieve total transparency by:

1. Having conversations with your customers,

2. Letting them know what your product contains and how it will help them –be honest

here. For instance, our meat comes from happy, grass-fed cows in Nebraska.

3. Not hiding anything

4. Getting feedback and acting on it

The question is, how can you become a customer service organization that is also in the

(industry you are in) business?

If you would like to take your customer service to the next level, check out Brad Sugars

Business Academy “Business Excellence” course. Specifically “Why Customer Retention is

King a complete unit dedicated to this subject.

This unit aims at helping you master serving your customers so you can achieve astounding

results in your business. In this course you will learn how to attract and retain customers by

genuinely understanding YOUR customers’ needs, wants and expectations. – See more at:

http://academy.social27.com/bradsugarsacademy/Classes?cid=2893#sthash.cSzibmpW.dpuf