The Cloud Secrets Show

Three Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% Part Two. Hey, welcome back. Nice to have here. Cloud Secrets Podcast, Marcel Martens again, and today I'm going to talk about part two of how I free up my schedule for at least 80%, and the second option is by automating your tasks or things. Because when you automate it, you need to make sure that it happens on a consistent basis in the same way that you or one of your people would do. And to give you an example, we provide backup online as a service. And for that we charge the customer the quota that we reserve for them. We've got monitoring on it, and when it triggers that the customer's using 90% or more, the system will generate an email and send it to our support desk so they can increase the quota so that the customer can keep backing up all their data.

Afterwards, when they update the quota they need to adjust the contract so billing gets accordingly to increase the numbers of size that they use, or well, can use, and change the contract to the amount of size that they use so billings get done correctly. Afterwards they need to close the ticket and inform the customer that that quota has been increased and that they don't need to worry, and we will make sure they can keep backing up all their data. But normally these, this task takes like five to 10 minutes for a person to carry out. And it's a lot of folds.

Well, if somebody gets a call in between, they get disrupted and they forget to increase the contract. So we leave money on the table. By automating this task or this sequence of tasks, we not only can eliminate it from some person, I don't know, we've got like 40 to 60 times a week now that we need to increase quotas times a five minute average. Go count. It's going to free up a lot of time that we can spend on other projects, on other tasks, and instead of hiring more staff. So that's why I gave the order to automate that particular task for example, and that's what I do with every task that comes on my desk. And I asked my question, can I delegate it or can I automate it? And in part three I'm going to talk about another one. It's going to be a three part series. By automating a lot of those tasks, you can free up an enormous amount of time.

Also, it's done 24/7 because it's going automatically so you never are limited down to business hours or whatever. It's on a consistent basis every single moment of the day, which is a huge advantage because in this case, when the back up exceeds the 90% it's going to be updated with more space within, I don't know, a few minutes and we can make sure that the customer can perform their job instead of canceling it when he's out of quota or out of size or you know what I mean? So ask yourself the following question, how many tasks or things at my plate can I delegate in a correct way? And let's recap the delegation. You just don't want to delegate the task to somebody else, which you also want to make sure that they perform the task on a consistent basis with the same output that you would provide so within the same time, within the same amount of time spent and within the deadline or if you got a deadline. Right. You know what I mean?

So count the number of tasks that you can delegate that way. And the second question you need to ask yourselves is, how many tasks can I automate? Because when you've got a task, a repetitive task that at least, I don't know, maybe 10 times a week occurs and it takes you five minutes, you could free up almost an hour by automating it. So when you spend like $1,000 to automate it, it's going to earn itself back in no time because you can, you can have more time to help more customers, get more offers out of the door, sign up more contracts, or onboard new customers take the advantage where it is. So that's it for part two. Next week I'm going to record part three and I love to see you then. Thank you very much, bye bye. Marcel Martens.

Three ways to clear out your schedule by 80%. First, go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk about how you can free up 80% of your appointments or schedule or whatever you want to call it.

Hey, welcome back. Marcel Martens of the Cloud Secrets podcast. And today, I want to share with you three ways that I use on a regular basis to keep my schedule as free as possible so I can attend to the things that matter most to me or move the needle the most as Dean Graziosi tells. What ways do you think works best to free out or to clear out your schedule?

That's an open question. You can think about it for a while, but as one, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner or a CEO, or whatever you want to call it, or whatever your function is, or your role in your organization, when you're growing, you start hiring staff that you can delegate certain tasks to your employees or your colleagues or your staff. You know what I mean right?

So by delegating tasks, you can free up your time. But when you start delegating your tasks, what is most important for you when you delegate a certain task? For me, it matters that it will be done in the same way that I do it, but there's more than just a simple system or routine or method. You know what I mean right?

If they follow the instructions, then they can be done properly, but will they do it in the same amount of time if you bill by the hour to your customer? Will they deliver within expected timeframes? Will they fill in the blank. And those are the questions that you really need to ask yourself before delegating the task to somebody else.

And besides delegating a task, who's going to be responsible that it gets done properly in time, in agreement with your customer or a colleague or whoever you the task is for.

So what I've started doing, I'm a big fan of Ken Blanchard. I'll put a link below on this blog, podcast, video, wherever you watch or listen to this. Ken Blanchard has written several books with several people, and the one that inspired me most is the One Minute Manager or the New One Minute Manager because it uses the three principles as the one minute goal or one minute target, the one minute compliment, the one minute punishment if you... I don't know the exact translation for that right now.

But those three principles, and then you combine it with the situational leadership method that he describes in the other book, you can assign or just discuss or agree upon with your colleague or employee or freelancer or whatever that you write this one minute goal so the person knows exactly what to be expected of them, and so knows what he needs to do, when it needs to be finished, how to do it properly.

And with that, you can also agree upon the development stage, the person is in. If it's in 01 or 02, phase one or two of the development, well, then you need a lot of guidance or even some help to help them accomplish the task in a proper way or in time. While they are in development stage four, you can fully delegate the task and that's where you want to grow to with the person that you delegate your tasks to.

So at first, you need to spend a lot of time and efforts in not only delegating it but teaching the person how to perform that particular task in the way that you would do for your customer or whomever you're doing it for. So you get to raise your standards and keep your standards while you're delegating the task to all the people, if you know what I mean.

I think I'm going to make this a three part series because otherwise it will be too long to finish it up on all in one. But since I've been using Ken Blanchard's methods with my personnel or with my employees, they are making steps I wouldn't be thought were possible for any human being to make, except if you listened it in my last podcast, the power of coaching, how many steps or how quick you can grow with proper coaching. And it's an ascension, it's the same I'm trying to do with my employees so I don't hit the buttons anymore. They got to do all the tasks.

I'm just their leader with big quotes rounded it, if you know what I mean. My job is to keep them busy, generate sales, so they've got work that needs to be done. And if you listen to other episodes, you know my sales almost comes automatically with the machine that we've built for generating new leads. We have a high closure rate. So we don't miss a lot of opportunities on people that we actually don't know because always we've always got hot leads from current customers, so it's just so easy if you do it properly.

Well, that's what I wanted to share for you today, part one of how to free up 80% of your schedule by delegating it. First, it's going to cost you more time than doing it yourself. But by doing so, you train your employees or staff, or you can even do it one on one, but with three people at the same time or 10 people, I don't know how many you've got for that particular workload. You can all train them at the same time.

So at first, it's going to cost you a little extra, but later on, you'll reap the rewards of it because it's going to free up that task out of your schedule. And you only need to check upon the things that they do. And if they do it properly, pat them on their backs. It's far too important, and most entrepreneurs or business owners don't compliment their staff enough.

And if you take a look at his book, Gung Ho also of Ken Blanchard, you've got the story of the squirrel, the beaver and the goose. I suggest you read it because it's an eye-opener. That's where they explain how important encouraging is. So encourage your staff or employees or freelancer or whatever on a regular basis when you see that they done something properly or extraordinary. Name it at that spot, don't delay it. Just pat them on their backs, tell them they did a good job or an awesome job, also why. You got to boost their confidence and they will perform even better by the tasks you delegate to them.

That's it for today. I'll see you guys next time. I'll try to do our best to record part two later on today so I can run in through two or three days. And I'll put it online so you can enjoy it and reap the benefits of it. That's it. See you guys next time. Thank you very much. Bye now. Marcel Martens.

The power of feedback. First we go to the intro song, and then I'm going to talk about recent discoveries I had on a ... first go through the intro song, and then I'm going to talk about the feedback that I get from my online trainings or webinars, and the change I've made afterwards to improve my conversion rates. So, see you guys in a bit.

Hey, good morning. Marcel Martens. Welcome back. It's good to be here, and how good that you are here. Last week I gave an online training, as I told in the earlier episode, using a webinar ... sorry, and I didn't do any conversions while I was having a lot more users who were attending the webinar. I believe that I had a show up rate of over 50%, which I read about is pretty high, but I didn't do any conversions. And I set up an automation that will send the people who opted in for the webinar an email if they didn't watch more than 80% of it. And then I'd just drop them an email the day after, I saw that you didn't make it or didn't finish watching the webinar. It's good that we have the recordings, so here's a link to the replay or the recordings where you can watch it. If you've got any feedback for me, please let me know because I like to improve things, and provide more value for you.

And there was this woman who dropped me an email, I don't know, within five minutes, telling me that she left half in the webinar. First, it was because I told her she didn't watch it in the email, because I set a trigger on 80% of watch time. And she said, Hey, yes I was there, but I left because of the following reason, and now it comes, to me ... and I'm quoting her, to me you were like laughing about how customers use particular systems. I was in the webinar, I'm telling something about the people that are using POP3 emails, IMAP, et cetera, that in order for them to see their sent items on all their devices, they put their own email address in the CC, so they receive it again at their mobile device or desktop device or whatever.

And for me, well since I'm, I don't know, a bit spoiled with the cloud solutions and the convenience of it, to me it's complete logic that I can access my sent emails on all my devices. But for a lot of entrepreneurs, and especially sole entrepreneurs, it's not, because they just get a mailbox with their website and they start using it and they don't know any better. Which is fine of course, because it's not their fault. I mean, nobody explained to them that they could separate those two things and set it up properly.

So, I was actually telling a story that I was standing behind an entrepreneur of which I saw that he was sending an email to one of his relations, and putting his own email address in the CC. So I was asking him, why do you put your own email address in the CC, because it's in your sent items. Why do you want it twice? He said, oh, it's just to make sure that I have it on my cell phone and my iPad and whatever. And I started laughing, and I was laughing in the webinar, while I was telling that story, and that's where she thought that I was ... well, didn't take my customer seriously, and was laughing at him. And that was something I did unconscious. So, it's never my intention to make fun of anyone, especially in the open because well, it's not like me.

And for her to take the efforts in providing feedback was of tremendous value for me, because now I'm conscious and I can decide not to laugh at certain points during the training or webinar. So I can keep it professional, and just keep explaining and sharing value with my prospects, because that's what they are in my webinar, I'm trying to sell one to many, instead of one to one.

So to me it was an eye opener, and last night I did another webinar, or online training, as I call them here. Well, even my opt in rates dropped a bit. I had a higher attendee list. More people attended the webinar. And even got some ... well, it's not conversion yet, because they opt in for an intake call. So I'm going to call them today and see if I can convert them. I sent them the legal documents to sign so he can start and go ahead. So it was really an eye opener for me, for somebody who took the time and effort to provide feedback, because it was of so much value, and now I understand why Russell Brunson, in his expert secrets books or in dotcom secrets books, he really focuses on ... no, it's not focusing ...

He's explaining why it's so important to keep doing the webinar live, and not just automated after a few trials because you keep getting feedback. And after a year, you perfected your webinar or your online sales pitch, and then you can automate it. So, I'm going to keep doing this for every week, until I get more conversions, until I get this tuned out, or fine tuned. And then I will start considering to automating it.

So, that's it for today. If you'd like to know more about my methods, go to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. I've created a cloud secrets course in which I'll train you every little step of the way of my MIT method. That will also have some bonus trainings that will give you ... well, let you know how I acquire new customers, how to acquire new customers fast, how to acquire customers off your current customer base, and lots and lots and lots and lots more. So take a look at cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind.

By the way, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on your favorite podcast app, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, wherever you are, and provide some feedback, because then I know what to talk about next time. Okay, thanks again, Marcel Martens, bye-bye. And have a great day.

To automate, delegate, or eliminate. First we'll go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk all about it.

Hey guys. Welcome back, Marcel Martens with Cloud Secrets Podcast. And today I want to talk to you about how I automate things, delegate things, or eliminate things that don't contribute to my personal goals, or things that I... Well, as Dean Graziosi names them, his needle movers. So the thing that don't move the needle for me in my life, that's the things that I automate, delegate or eliminate.

And I hope you're doing fine. By the time you hear this, probably Tuesday or Thursday, for me it's Monday while I record this. I had a lovely weekend, had a lot of time with the kids, some parties, joined a soccer game, and well my son got his well diploma for swimming yesterday. So one step further down the road, one more to go, and then he's finished as well. So, well it was a nice weekend spent some time with family. Well then, that perfectly aligns with the things that I want to talk to you about today because, things that don't contribute to your goals or the things you set to do by this week, this month, this year. And as Tony Robbins calls them, calls it you... But most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they also underestimate what they can do in a decade.

So by having a plan and stick to it, by sticking to it I mean, well on a weekly basis or make it a habit of using a method where you... But my wife told me, no not told me, teach me, I don't know maybe 10 years back, that when I write down three things I need to finish today and I do it on a daily basis, I get massively get things done. But now I'm taking it a step further and I'm doing it on a weekly basis for my weekly goals, on a monthly basis for my monthly goals and the same for my yearly goals. So every week when I go over my journal, I'll see the things that I need to get done this week that really as Dean again names them... have moved the needle. So things that really changed in my life or make it better or, you know what I mean, right?

And same thing goes by daily goals, monthly goals and yearly goals. So for example, if you go hire experts and you go to these lance sites that I talked before in the early episode. And you got UPWork, you got Freelancer.com you got Fiverr, you got 99Designs. Yeah all these kinds of lance sites where you can just post a job description or a task and people apply for it. You can even mention your budget, so only people that can make it within that budget will respond. It's absolute gold because, let me give you an example, we got... We sell backup online and our customers pay by the quota that we reserve for their backups.

So for example, we reserved 100 gigabytes and we set a 90% threshold. So when that threshold is breached, we get an email or a trigger that we need to increase the quota, so this particular customer can keep backuping his data. But all those steps is like five to 15 minutes manual labor. They need to go... Well, the email that we get as trigger is sent to our ticket system. So a support ticket is created, the engineer needs to bind it or the customer service user needs to assign it to the customer. Then he needs to increase quota, he needs to change contract so, billing gets done. And then he needs to close down the ticket, communicate with the client that the quota has increased. And all of these steps is like five to 15 minutes. And maybe we got 20 to 40 times a week that we need to increase that quota.

And in this case, it isn't a needle mover for my own life, but when I can eliminate this and... Well, we can't eliminate it because it needs to get done. But when I can automate that task... At first, I delegated it because 10 years back I was doing it myself, then we hired some staff and I can delegate it to my staff. So that task is no longer on my desk and I can do a lot of things. And now my engineer is of too much value to, well basically do this kind of lame work. It's repeating work every single time, the same steps need to be taken. It's well flawed to human error. Well, if they missed a step because they received a phone call, billing is incorrectly or whatever. So all these risks that you'll... The risk we want to eliminate, but also to free up more time of the engineer so he can do more things that move the needle for the business.

So at this point we're automating the entire sequence so there's no manual labor involved anymore. And I encourage you to take a look at your own task or your own goals or your own things that you do on a daily or weekly basis that you can automate, delegate, or eliminate. Because lots of people just start browsing on social media and if it's Instagram or Facebook, I don't care. And then they realize, Oh my God, I've been swiping up for an hour or two hours. And that's lost time you never get it back. Time is our most valuest thing because you can't make any more of it. So I encourage you to take a look at automating, delegating and eliminating. And for me browsing on social media, I've completely eliminated it. Well I try to stop responding to messages that I get, because I get overwhelmed by so much messages then I can't keep up.

And again, I did an earlier podcast about it I believe, to stand out of the crowd you need to be polarized. And so, I stand for things that you know. If you follow me by now, I don't like OneDrive, I don't like SharePoint, we are very fond of Office 365 but we combine it with the Google G suite, especially the Google Drive and other things... Well, to make a successful Always Safe in Business Suite that really moves the needle for our customers. So IT is a tool, it's not a purpose on its own so, that they can just start their laptop, their desktop, their whatever and just start working without any problems. So again, I encourage you to look at all your tasks and all your things to do or your goals, see where you can automate things.

It's really cheap or really affordable these days when you go to these lance sites and you can hire people from all around the world and well, get more things done that really matter to you. So you got more time for your family, for the things you love to do. And well, that's it for now. To me, I've been doing this for the last two years and it's proven me so much value every single time. So I hope we can get anything out of it, out of this. And if so, please provide some feedback or comment down below because I'd love to hear what you well, really made happen. If you freed up X amount of hours in a week or got time to more to play with the kids or whatever, just let me know. I like to know, it encourages me to keep creating these kind of episodes and then I'll see you guys next time.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye, Marcel Martens.

Oh yeah, by the way, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to keep up with new updates. And well share some feedback for the rest of you guys out there. So, thank you very much again. Bye-bye Marcel Martens.

Customize your offer or not. First, you go through the intro song and then I'm going to talk to why I don't customize any offers any longer.

Hi, guys. Welcome back. Marcel Martens Cloud Secrets podcast. Hope you're doing fine. We've got a great start of 2020. If you listen to earlier episodes, my webinars keep filling up more and more. Well, the ratio that shows up, I don't know, 10-folded last night. At first, I had, I don't know, maybe 1% or 2% of show ups, people that show up, watch the online training as they call it.

Yesterday, I had over 50% rate that showed up. Of that 50%, almost 50% state until the end, I didn't do any conversions directly like last time. Last time, I had a 50% conversion rate. I did the same training, same slides, basically the same story, maybe a little bit different left some sheets, but in essence, it was all the same. I sent out an email today with the replay and for people to think about my proposal and they get until the end of the week to decide if they want to use the proposal I sent them. Yes or no.

Then it comes, to customize or not. I got a lot of questions during the webinar of people who would like to customize or want to break up my Always Safe in Business suite. I tell him directly, no, it's not what we do. It's not what we stand for. By using my method, the MIT method of implementation and using the suite, I can guarantee success every single time. I can make sure people can use it everywhere on any device and have complete logic of where, what is stored and they know where they can find what data instead of with a OneDrive or SharePoint mixed together.

Customizing offers, if I could tell you a story of my first, almost 10 years as an entrepreneur. I've set up and developed several Cloud services of remote desktop, Citrix. We were selling VPS machines. We were hosting managed services. We were doing all these different types of hosting and not web hosting, but dedicated application or service hosting for our customers or for certain industry. The hard part was not only that every single solution was, well, we couldn't sell it more than once because it was specially built for that particular customer, so we couldn't scale. The second problem that we faced was due to the diversity of services, well, it comes very hard to make it reliable money-wise because you've got all of these different expertise.

While I love the diversity, usually IT professionals like to have as a specialism in some area and then all about that. That's fine. If we want to keep accommodating all those services and to level that we want to provide those services, we need so much experts that we actually start losing money. That's why we always, not always, almost got bankrupt during those times. That was the time that we decided this wasn't the best way to go. So we made, I don't know, 130 or 180 turn around and start focusing on only one thing. That's always safe for business suite. By doing so, our sales, well, are still exponentially growing because every new customer provides on average, again, three new customers and by that, the acquisition machine is fully running and fully operational. Like I told you last time, my only challenge for this year is to figure out a way to, instead of selling one-on-one, belly-to-belly, like they call it in personal meetings or on a phone call, I'm going to go for many-to-one so I can sell lots of people during, for example, a webinar or any other form.

I chose the webinar format for now. I'm using the Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets books as a guide for how to set it all up and how to present myself as the experts and convince them. Well, basically, it comes down if you read Russell's books. You've got three beliefs that, you got one big domino and if you let the domino fall and recreate new beliefs, then there's no other possibility that your customer has to give you money and there's no alternative. You've got the internal, the external and the resource false belief that you need to reprogram in their minds. You need to break down internal struggles, "Oh, this isn't for me. This doesn't work for my company." All these excuses. You need to convince them, break down the current belief and build up a new one.

Then the external, "Oh, my colleagues won't work with this software. They don't like it." I don't know. All of these external factors that, well, make it so that you don't make the step that's absolutely necessary to start the transformation. Lastly, the resources part, it comes down to money, equipment or whatever. You need to make sure that in their head that they don't pay more than they already do. They actually start making more money, cut down on costs. When you do so, the only part left is, well, they're convinced and they need to give you money. That's where it comes in. Never, at least I never customize any offer again. It's a two-way agreement. That's not something, here it is, take it or leave it.

The other part is also committing to making this work, so it's really a two-way effort to make it a success. With my method, I can guarantee that success every single time for any type of customer, for any niche they're in. I don't care if they are laundry service or provide to do it for you services or they are a transport business. I don't care. I can make this work for every single company every single time.

If you're interested on how I all do it, go to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. Again, that's cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. There can opt in for my Cloud Secrets course in which I will train you every single step of the way from the inventory to the aftersales part and all steps in between. That will guarantee success for you and your customer as well. If you want to transform 2020 and make it your most successful year ever, I strongly encourage you to take a look and take the first step towards your success. I love to see you again. If you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you watch or listen this and I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Marcel Martens.

Do you want success in business? Then you have to focus on what customers want, not what they need, because customers always buy what they want. After the theme song, I'll share with you how I apply this to my business.

What does the customer want? For us, we are IT suppliers, cloud service providers or whatever kind of doing-it-for-you services that we offer. We provide services or we do things for our customers so they don't have to do them themselves, even if they got the knowledge or not, it's really not important. They just want to spend their time on their most valuable things, they are ave the things that generate the most revenue or whatever it is they do. And by outsourcing IT, that's what most businesses do these days, with cloud services, well you can outsource it directly to Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whatever kind of supplier that's in the market, but who is going to set it all up? Who's going to migrate all your data into the new system and who's going to maintain and keep your customers updated on the way they can go, the way they use systems, the way they can integrate systems.

So, basically today what I want to talk about is sell your customer what they want. What does your customer want? Do you know it? Did you ever ask any customer or prospect that very direct question: what do you want? What outcome do you want when all things aside. Okay, pick an empty box and let the prospective customer think and explain to you what an ideal system for him or her would look like. And that will give you a ton of insights because they're going to share things on the way they like to see it and the way they can do business optimal in their situation, because every single business differs from another one.

So, there's no one shoe fits all solution here, there's no one size fits all. You have to always look at customer wants and needs, of course, I'll come back to that later. Because the customer will always buy what he wants, not what he needs, he buy what he wants to have. If you let them explain why they want it, it could be a total different thing, which doesn't have to do anything with IT. If they got moral issues against Google for harvesting personal data, then you don't want to be starting your sales conversation about your Google solution.

So, let them first explain what they want and when they do and then talk about, "Okay, I want to have the ease and comfort of working everywhere, anytime on any device and any place on and offline and whatever. And I've heard a few things about Office 365, which sounds amazing. I've got some friends who are using it for their business, some relatives of family members and I think that's the best way to go."

"Okay, why do you think that's the best way to go?"

"Yeah, because they'er telling me these stories that it's working for them, so I suppose it works for me as well."

I say, "Okay. And how do you see that with your files?" That will be a question from my side because that's why we combine Office 365 with the Google Drive instead of SharePoint and OneDrive.

And then they say, "No, well it's pretty easy. I can use so many devices I have."

"Yes, that's correct"

"And I can use it on and offline."

"That's partially right." And well, then you can break down their beliefs. And when you break down their beliefs and rebuild proper beliefs, so you have to come with a good enough set of arguments and why that particular solution on its own is not going to solve all his problems. And when you focus on solving his problems, he doesn't care, or he or she, I don't try to make any difference here, but it's just a natural habit of me.

So, that particular prospective customer doesn't care about what particular solution he's buying or needs to, actually wants. First we start off with a want and then we go to the need, because on the end you need to fulfill the need. Let's go back to the story. He or she doesn't care on what solution they're using, as long as is solves all their problems. So, if you can ask enough questions to get to the bottom of where it itches, where are their frustrations? What can't they do? If they can do it, well, it would make, I don't know, 80% difference in daily operations. And if you can get that point on the table and you can address it and then you can solve it for them, that's why you create raving fans because, well first you got to deliver of course, which I'm pretty convinced you're capable of.

But then you need to over-deliver. And by over-delivering, that's where you make the difference between a customer or a raving fan. And I always go for raving fans because that's the way you increase sales and that's the way that you, go back a few podcasts, I don't know, maybe 10, 15 episodes back, I did an episode about how every new customer generates, I don't know, 30 new customers within the next year if you do it properly. So, if you go back to the last episode for my webinar, the subscribers paid on average I believed was $4 or $5 to opt in for our webinar. Even when I count all expenses on ads, it came down to I believe $200 per conversion for a prospect who was joining the webinar for signing the contract afterwards for our Always Safe Business suite.

So, that one, what did I say? $200, $250. I don't know. That's what I paid, per conversion, sorry with all the confusion here. Let's say $250 I don't have it on my top of my head now. It's somewhere between $200 and $250 for per conversion. If I take that down to 30 customers, I'm not good at math in my head, but I believe it's less than $2. So, that's an average around, I don't know, $8 a new customer. So, if I can acquire a new customer for $8, that's really cheap and that's why I need to over-deliver so I can get the wheel spinning and get a lot of spinoff of that particular customer, or in this case X amount of customers times X amount of new leads, times X amount of new customers, times X amount of new leads. And that keeps on going and if you follow up properly, you don't have to do so much about sales. It comes naturally. It's just another recipe, another routine that if you follow it properly, customers will be coming to you and you don't have to do cold canvassing ever again.

If you like this, I would like to know more about how I performed the webinar. Go back to episode 41, listen to it, read it and read it again. There are some links to expert secrets and the DotCom Secrets book of Russell Brunson, he offers a free plus shipping offer. Just covered the shipping costs and you'll send you the books for absolutely no money and you get so much value out of them. I'm sharing my results here with you, but there the techniques are explained in the utmost detail on what to do in what order. And I love to see you benefit from that as well. It's congruent with my core values and that is that my intention is to leave everybody in a better state than when I first met them.

So, maybe this is our first encounter and you're listening for the first time. I want you to know that why I'm doing is this to help other IT professionals out there or startups who just want one thing, and that's to over-deliver every single time to their customer and offer them a secure and safe cloud solution. So that's it. Thank you for listening. See you guys next time. And good luck with your progress. Get to it. Bye-bye. Marcel Martens.

Boom. 50% conversion after my webinar. Absolutely fricking amazing. I'm so joyed and so filled with enthusiasm. After the theme song, I'm going to share my dirty little secret on how I converted that many people.

Hi, Marcel Martens. Welcome back to the Cloud Secrets podcast and I promised you to keep you updated on the progress of the webinar series that I'm going to do for one of my companies, M-IT Services, on selling the Always Safe business suite.

Just a few steps back. I've been trying to sell like cloud services since, I don't know, maybe 10 years online. Actually never made any online conversion or sales, so direct sales, that's what I mean.

And it's always been belly to belly, going to the customer, explaining what we do, how we do it and what we charge for it and I've been struggling and looking for a way to sell one to many.

In this case I use webinars. I can also do events and all other kinds of things, but I thought start an easy way and start using webinars in the shape of an online training. At least that's what I sell the people on the ad that they can opt in for an online training, on how to combine Office 365 and Google G Suite for optimal use and performance.

So yesterday, we finally did it. We made our first conversions using a webinar. Lots of people were very enthusiastic and opted in right away after, well when the webinar was finished. I made a special offer for them for that.

I followed the guidelines of Expert Secrets. In this case I can see myself as the expert who will train different entrepreneurs or other entrepreneurs and business owners on how to successfully use IT, how to use IT for their business to a company growth, save costs, save money, increase revenue and increase profits.

And that's the thing that I sold them in the webinar. I also gave a demo so people can see what I can do and how I use it. They know they are secure, that all their data has been backed up daily automatically without any human interaction, and all their systems are well fully secured or protected against ransomware, cyber crime and all that kinds of activities that you don't want to encounter on your systems or your data.

So I'll put down a link below where you can download the free book. It's a free book, people and I encourage you to download it or order it, it's free. The guy Russell Brunson, he only charges shipping fee, so the book is free and if you, it's also a recommendation. You can order a black box that's containing the Expert Secrets book, and the Dotcom Secrets book.

A huge advantage getting out of them, and I'll welcome you into his world because he's a phenomenal guy. He's the funnel man and basically the people that enter the webinar have been using in this case, a working funnel finally. So I figured it out. I know what to do. I know what comes next. This time I'm going to change my ad strategy to get even more opt-ins and convert more people.

So that's it for today. Once again, I'll put a link down below where you can get your free Expert Secrets book and please let me know what you, when you read it, when you're done, what you gain from it? I'm curious. I just want to know if I can help you in any other way.

So please, share some feedback and if you liked this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, wherever you are listening and using audio or video.

Okay, that's it guys. See you next time. Bye bye. Marcel Martens.

An 1100% increase of opt-in rates for my webinar. How do I do it? I'll explain after the theme song.

Hey, good morning, guys. What's up? Marcel Martens' Cloud Secrets podcast. Yesterday, or at least ... Well, go to episode 39. There I'll tell you about my action plan to acquire 1,000 new subscribers for our Always Safe in Business Suite. And as I explained, most of the time I kind of like no, I love it to take massive action because massive, massive, massive amounts of action is what gets things done and when you get why and when you get results. So two days ago, as I told, I was working until 1:30 in the middle of the night to get my automation and, and Facebook advertising done for the gathering opt-ins for my webinar to sell the always saving business suite. And when I look at the results last night, and I waited until 12 o'clock so I had a full day, even though the ads only started running at 10:45 I think in the morning.

So basically it's half a day. And when I compare them to earlier campaigns that I've run, I had an 1100% increase of opt in rates and that just blew my mind. So for just 50 bucks, that's what I spent yesterday on Facebook ads and Instagram ads gave me an increase of 1100% it blew my mind.

I love it. I'm going to prepare the webinar for next Monday and I'll let you know how many people or how many new customers we acquire during that webinar. I just love to share my success stories that work that don't work so you can save the time and trouble and just pick the right strategy that works. So you can copy my, no, not copy... Model my work, we don't copy things. We model it and make it work. So, if I'm not mistaken, I got an...

No, it's, I don't know if it's in English. I made a Facebook training earlier for one of my shows, but I can't recall if it's in English or in Dutch sow. I'll look it up. If it's in English post down, a link below so you can go to cloud-secrets.com look for episode 40 and there I will, if it's in English otherwise in Dutch for the people who can speak Dutch as well. Maybe I get it translated, I don't know. I'll put it in a link where I can explain you the Facebook advertising strategy that I've used that's working and blown me away. Just a quick share. Thank you very much. If you like this, please rate and subscribe and give feedback on the iTunes or iHeart radio or wherever you are listening or watching this. I thank you very much again and I'll see you guys next time.

Bye bye Marcel Martens.

Facebook Training (dutch)

What belief, what behavior, or what emotional habit do you have that's prevented you from doing what you need to do? First we go to the theme song, and then we're going to talk to you about how to make 2020 the best year ever.

Hey, what's up? Marcel Martens of the Cloud Secrets Podcast. Welcome back. And first of all, a Happy New Year. I wish you all the best. Make it a beautiful year. It's a new decade, people, and it's time for change, and change only can happen when you break through. Are you going to get out of your old habits? A lot of people fail in the first month of their new goals that they set, or new things that they, well... They promise themselves to start doing in the new year, but most people fell off in a few weeks or a few months.

So how can you make sure you stick up to it and make lasting change? Because when you go to the next level or make lasting change happen, you get to the new level, the next , a higher level, or be a better version of yourself, that's what I mean. And for me, I take action straightaway when I make a decision. And a decision can be, for example, stop smoking. I don't smoke a long time, in I don't know, six, seven years, but don't wait until the 1st of January or whatever. Just do it. Like Nike says, "Just do it," people.

When is the best time to plant a golden tree? It was 20 years ago. What's the second best time for planting that tree? That's right now. Don't wait another day, take action. Don't fool yourself. I've done it a long time and what it basically should come down to is turn your shoulds into musts. "I should do this, I should do that, I should start on this, I should stop X," fill in the blanks. "I should do________. I should start________." Or you make it a must: "I must do________. I must do X. I must do________" Fill in what you want to do and make it a must!

Make it congruent with your feelings and get enough leverage or a good enough reason why! Because motivation only lasts that long. And if you want lasting change, you need leverage, more leverage. Let me give you an example. I really quit smoking after our second child was born. When my wife was pregnant with the first child we were getting, I quit smoking, of course, because I couldn't sit next to her while she was pregnant, smoking in the house. And I'm not going outside to get a smoke.

So one day my daughter comes to me and I was, I don't know, reading some articles on my phone or reading some email and smoking a cigarette, and she would come to me and chat. "Daddy?" "Yes girl, what's up?" "I don't want you to die!" "What do you mean babe? I'm not going to die. Where's this coming from?" "Yes you are." I said, "No, I'm not. I'm eating my vegetables, I'm sporting, I'm working out three to five times a week. Why do you think I'm going to die?" "You need to quit smoking!" "Quit smoking? I've been smoking for 20 years girl, why do you think I need to stop right now? I know it's bad, but it's not going to kill me." "Yes, it does" Okay? "Daddy, I don't want you to die! I want you to be there when I get married."

And that's the leverage that, I mean. You know it, right? That's the moment the quarter falls down the slot machine and things start linking up and that's when you decide. Not just a conscious decision, but also you feel it with your entire body that, "Okay, I need to quit right now." I put down my last cigarette and never smoked again.

And that's the same with what belief or what behavior or what emotional habit do you currently have that's prevented you from doing________? Fill it in, whatever it is for you. For me it's breaking through $1 million in revenue. We've been several years in a row now, almost hit the $1 million target. It's this year I set my goal, I'm going to break through. My habit, my belief was that with a small company that we have in M-IT services, we're only six people large. We've got six employees. And I thought, "Okay, maybe this is it, they're doing around eight, $900,000 but why not? I bet if I get the right belief, we can 10x it and go to, I don't know, 10 million. Maybe we need a few more people.

We can easily 10x it, because we sell a recurring revenue. We sell cloud services, which generate revenue every single month. And every time we add a new customer, that monthly recurring revenue increases. So by just keeping the focus on growing and acquiring new customers you can break through that $1 million line. That's my goal for this year.

And I changed my behavior. So what I did yesterday, and I've been working until, I don't know, half past 1 AM to set up. I'm going to give webinars once a week and I'll hope somewhere between 100 and 200 attendees per webinar. And then I'm going to sell the always safe and business suite to business owners, or at least get a sales appointment, in which we can sell the always safe and business suite. So I took massive action to make sure that the sixth of January, that's when I first do the webinar, and today Facebook approved my ads. And within 30 minutes I already had two people sign up. So I know this is working. I've seen it before. If you want to know more, go get a copy of Russell Brunson's FREE "Expert Secrets" and "DotCom Secrets" books (on the second page you can add the Dotcomsecrets book). I even got another part yet, but I don't want to reveal it yet because we need to set up that stuff before I could share it with you.

And latest my emotional habit is that I'll feel more secure or more... What do you call it? More certain that I can do this as well. I've seen dozens, if not hundreds of people, business owners, acquiring massive amounts of new customers using webinars. The only limiting belief was that, "Well it's not for me, I can't do this." Even when I got the presentation ready and got the webinar software and you know, the subscription and everything.

So last year I decided, this year I'm going to break through that million dollar line and for that I need to at least acquire 1000 new subscribers in a year. So that means that we need to step up our game and get ready to run because that's going to be a whole lot of migrations if we want to successfully migrate all those users to our platform.

So what's holding you back? What's your limiting belief behavior or emotional habit? Fill it in, think about it, make a conscious decision. Make sure you feel it in your gut, in your entire system. And then finally take massive amount of action. And don't stop until you're there. If you don't try, you know for sure you're going to fail, so every time you take a step forward is a step towards that next level and towards your success.

So I'm going to leave it for that for today. I wish you all the best. Step up your game. Make a plan for 2020 and make it a best year ever. That's what I'm going to do and I hope you can do it with me. If so, and you've got success, please share it on our Facebook group or whatever. Just find me or react on posts on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you use it, or on YouTube, make a review on iTunes. Send me some feedback that's a question. Thanks in advance and go for it, tiger!

I know you can do it bye bye Marcel Martens.

What do all successful people do or have? After the theme song, I'm going to talk all about it.

Hey, welcome back to the Cloud Secrets Podcast. Marcel Martens here. Hope you had a lovely Christmas. First, I would like to wish you a Happy New Year. I wish you all the best and I hope you well made some plans for 2020 because I'm convinced it's going to be a lovely, wonderful, and happy and joyful and successful year, as long as you model successful people. But let's talk about it.

What do all successful people do or have? They all know their "outcome" or results that they're after. They also know their "purpose" and why they want it. What makes all the difference? They all take "massive action". And if you listen to Tony Robbins' podcasts, I'm sure this sounds familiar. He calls it OPA or RPM. OPA for outcome, purpose and action or RPM for rapid planning method. R stands for results. The M stands for meaning and P for... RPM, sorry, and M stands for massive action and the P was for purpose. So can we... Let's go back.

When you know the first one, how your outcome is going to be here. It can be: I want to make $100,000, I want to meet the girl of my life. I want to, I don't know, do 100 projects successfully, I want to attract ten more employees. Now, all your outcome, so and the what. And then you're like 50% of all the people because most people, or at least half of them know what they want and they don't just... On average, people in America, people watch television for seven hours a day on average. I don't know how they do it, not even with internet & mobile phone these days. But on average they watch seven hours a day. Uh, what a bunch of lost time there. Maybe I'll watch half an hour a day, for an example.

So most of you know your outcome and what the results that you're after. But do you know your why? My why, just to share and inspire you guys, is: "my intention is to leave everybody in a better state than when I first met them". I love to help people and I even do it for free, you know? It's nice that I can make a beautiful living out of it and give me all the things that I want, but in essence, I would do it for free because it's congruent with my core value. And so if you know your why, you separate yourself, because only 15% knows their why. And if you do the last step, that's where all the magic happens. That when you know what you want and why you want it, and you take massive, massive, massive amounts of action and that's when it all comes together. And that's only for 5% of the people worldwide.

So can we become successful too? Yes. How can we become successful? By modeling successful people. Let me tell you a story of a great friend of mine who has received the best chefs award for cooking skills. He makes these great plates, which are not only looking beautiful, but the smell, mm. You get water in your mouth instantly. And not to mention the taste, and that's the three ingredients for outstanding results. That's his outcome. But when I take a look at my friend, he's the best cook and he spent 20 years perfecting his meals or dishes or whatever you want to call them. And can we get the same results? Yes. How? We model what he does and compress decades into days, as Tony says.

Can we model him? Yes. What do we call that? How can we model a cook? By looking at his recipe. The recipe is like the ingredients. Not only the ingredients, but the amounts, the order in which to prepare the meal. All these things that need to happen in a certain way to make that dish the award-winning dish. So how can we model this cook? We can look at his recipe and how he makes it. But he hasn't got one, he told me. I said, okay, I love this. I ate with him several times, as much as I can because it's just damn delicious. But I ask him, "Oh, can you share this recipe with me because I like to make it for my wife or friends," or whatever. He said, "Nope." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Because I don't have one."

"You don't have one?" What do we call that? He makes this award-winning meal and he doesn't even know how. We call that unconscious competent. And we want to be conscious competent so that we know what we're doing and why we do it. How can we get this cook from unconscious competent to conscious competent? So I go to him and I ask him, "Okay, can you tell me what you did before you start making your award-winning meal?" It's usually on those TV shows or whatever. So they are in this room with other cooks together, all competing for the same result, for the same outcome.

"So, what did you think about on the way over?" And he was telling me the things that he does before he starts cooking. And I say, "Okay, you arrived at the event. What did you do next?" He told me, "Well, I try or I really love it when I have a few minutes for myself. I go over it in my head what I'm going to make and how it's going to look and how it's going to taste and, and basically what I'm there to do." So, "Okay, so you visualize the results you're going to create." "Yes," he says. I said,"Lovely." Visualization is the most underestimated tool that you can use for getting the results that you want.

But that's not what I'm talking about today, but it's a pretty powerful tool. So, "Okay, and then you entered the contest and you've got, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes or an hour or so to do your thing and then afterwards there was this jury who decided that you won the award?" "Yes." Okay. "When you start cooking, did you have a notebook? Did you have anything?" He said, "No." I said, "Okay, that's strange. But how do you know what you need to prepare and what time and order?" And he said, "I've been making this, this is my specialty. I've been fine tuning this for over 20 years. I can do it with my eyes closed. I can do it in my sleep and every time it's even better than the last time."

I said, "Wow, that's powerful. But if you want to teach me, what should I do? Can you write me a recipe?" He said, "No, I don't have one. I just do it out of my head." Okay.

"Can I come to you next week or whatever. Then I'm going to sit next to you and we're going to document this lovely dish. Would you be willing to?" "Yes." Okay, great. So I went and I brought him back "in state", so I did the same thing. Said, "Okay, can you sit down here because we've got to make the same dish, the same meal, maybe even better than that time that you created the... or received the award."

Okay. I said, "Okay, do the same thing. Visualize that you're driving to the event." "Yeah, I will, give me a few minutes." So we're sitting there, his eyes closed, calming briefly. He was visualizing driving to the event. I said, "Okay, what were you, now you're in your car right now. What were you thinking? What were you visualizing when you were driving to the event?" He said, "Okay, I would cook the potatoes and vegetables and start prepping the oven for a meal, for the meat and..."

"Okay, and then when you arrived, what did you do?"

"Yeah, I asked to get a separate room or a quiet room where I can go over and prepare myself." I said, "Okay, well you're sitting right now. Take a deep breath and do the same thing that you did there."

Why is that so important? It's most important to get in the same state because if you feel down today or you feel less energized or whatever, your outcome's going to be different. So I got to pat him up and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get him in his lovely state. He prepares the award winning dish so that's what we did.

And he was visualizing. "Oh yes, and then we're going to do this and this and this and here's these ingredients and they're all fresh and like... And we went to the market before, so we only got fresh vegetables and fresh meat and well as fresh as you're going to get it." So. Okay. I said, "Now. Well, you're ready?

"Yes."

"Okay, think about the contest that you're going to do the same thing as you did there."

"Yes, I will."

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, I am."

"Okay, great. Every time you pick some things or put something in a bowl or in a pan or whatever, I'm going to stop you and I'm going to write it down."

"Okay, great."

So he starts, he's taking these potatoes and, well, prepare them to cook. And I said, "Oh, stop. How many potatoes are you getting? Weigh them."

"Okay. 200 grams."

I said, "Great. Go back a step, what were you doing?" He said, "Oh, I don't know what I need to do next." And I said, "Yes, go back."

"Yes, I go back. Oh yeah, I was doing potatoes and then I've go to this cabinet and I'll take my herbs or whatever."

"Okay, stop. Before you add the herbs, tell me how much of everything. You put them in a bowl and we weigh them."

"Yes, okay." I write them down. So we go over every single step he takes. And how much time he lets them cook or fry or burn or whatever. So you get the point right? Every single time I take him back into his state of the winning contest and by doing so, he taught me or we both created this recipe.

So now I have compressed his 20 years of perfection perfecting his meal or his, I don't know, dinner dish or whatever you call it into, I don't know, maybe two pages of steps and ingredients and order and times that we need to get this great and lovely award-winning dish so I can go home, make it for my wife or make it friends or family. And they can have the same experience as the jury had when he was winning the award.

And why is this so powerful? 'Cause now we got him from unconscious competent to conscious competent. And that's the same what I'm offering you. Everybody can sell Office 365, everybody can use Google drive. Everybody can, I don't know, get customers for cloud services that you provide, but the magic thing to get the same results every single time is by looking at my recipe, and my recipe I like to call it my secret formula that we've developed over the years, that's what I'm offering you in my cloud secrets course.

If you want the same experience as the cook, well be outstanding. You've got... What do you get when you deliver a poor performance? Do you get anything you think? No. You're kicked out of the place. If you in a contest, you lose. You don't get a medal, you don't get a reward, you don't get anything. What if you deliver good results? You get poor things in return because good is normal. That's what people expect, so they don't come at you and, "Oh you're doing so great, here's a medal for you." No. Good as good. It's just like, "Hmm, okay. See you next time." What can you do better? What's the name of the next level of good? Excellent.

Excellent sounds nice, right? Oh, I bet all you guys are entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs see yourselves as excellent. Ah, yes. Good. What do you get if you deliver excellent services or whatever? You get good ratings. It's always one step down and what's the top of the line? The top of the line is outstanding and when you have out- you stand out of the rest, you're the best and you only need to jump one millimeter higher than all the rest to be the best.

I taught myself that I'm not competing with the rest the way I compete is "with the best possible version of me that I can be" and that's where I'll compete to get outstanding results every single time. I don't want happy customers. I don't want customers who think, "Yeah, that's what we expected. Thank you. Nice doing business with you. See you next time. Maybe, maybe not."

I want to be outstanding so I can create raving fans who can, I don't know, screaming on rooftops, "If you need IT or cloud service, you need to go to this guy because this guy will make everything work. This guy will over-deliver." This guy will, I don't know, fix all your problems that you have on IT so you can start focusing on your own business instead of IT troubles or whatever and employees and people nagging to you, "Oh, this doesn't work. Oh, we can't do this or we can't do that or my laptop is broken," or I don't know, I don't care what, we just want them to be able to focus on their own conscious competent thing they are doing so well in so they can increase their business, their sales, their... I don't know, have more time for the loved ones, whatever.

If you want that successful cloud service business as well, then it's time to step up to the next level because outstanding is only for the ones that are willing to go through, and well, stand out of the rest. So raise your standards, people, raise your standards. You're going to get resistance of your friends, your family, your relatives, your whatever, every people in your surroundings because you're going to break through and you're going to change and they are trying to keep you on the level that you're currently at because that's familiar and they don't want you to be better than them. So they tried to keep you down but break loose, go for it and be the best version of yourself you could ever be.

If you want, so go to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. I've created the cloud secrets course in which I will explain every single detail of my recipe, my secret formula to get you the results as the best chefs, as my friend who gets the best chefs award.

We've got multiple times of cloud servers rewards, I don't know, four years in a row I believe. We keep doing it because it just works people and then you never change a winning team. It's, we improve things, yes. Every single day, we keep improving, keep improving because we need to stay outstanding, and we don't let anybody else stand out over us, you know, we keep our game up we go next level every single day.

Okay? That's it. I wish you all the best for New Year's Eve. Enjoy your time. Spend your time with your friends, families, and your loved ones and to your success in 2020. See you then. Bye. Bye. Marcel Martens.

How to live in abundance. First we go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk about how I live in absolute abundance.

Hey, welcome back to the Cloud Secrets podcast. During this holiday season, I'm going to talk about the absolute abundance that I live. In and what gave me the opportunity or insight, if you want to call it that way, on the need to change and to make things work for you. So you can have the life of your dreams, feel loved, feel blessed, feel happy, feel joy, feel all the things that make you feel alive and matter.

So, for me, when I reflect back on the last two or three years of my life, I realize that it hasn't been easy. But because it hasn't been easy and we were near bankruptcy, so things had to change. There was no alternative than go bankrupt. So we need to drastically change things, not only in our private life, but also in our businesses to make things work. Because they were failing, and not a little bit, all was falling apart literally. And when I think back at 2016, 2017 and especially now with holiday season and Christmas coming up, I feel so blessed that I can enjoy going on a holiday with my family, with my kids, and have the best fun of my life. I go swimming, go to a adventure park or whatever. And to see them happy and playing and laughing and having the time of their life. That's when I think about I realize how blessed I am and that I truly live my life in abundance.

I know people are... it's just psychology, you know? People don't change if they don't absolutely need to. So every choice, every decision is made in a split second. And I hope you agree with me there, because it isn't a path going towards that decision. Yes, of course. But there will be a point in time or in your life, that you say, "Enough, no more of this. Enough, I'm done." And that moment is a split second people. And in that split second you make the decision to make whatever necessary changes so that that won't happen again, forever. And that's what we did in 2017 when we decided, okay, we want to have employees who work with the joy, who are happy working here. Who feel valued, feel warm, feel all the basic needs, every single human being has.

So by changing not only our staff, but also the things that we do privately. Because as you know, my wife was terribly ill, so not complain here, but I run the family business this as you could call it in four days a week. Basically any minute, any time of the day. And I run my business in three days a week. And because she was so terribly ill, that's the number one change, number one insight that I needed to get. It's literally, a quarter in a slot machine, it has to fall down and it has to land. And that's the moment where I decide, okay. And I literally told her because we were well talking about breaking up our marriage, which would've been awful. And we love each other. We always did. And I don't believe there's such thing as love at first sight, but I feel attracted to her. It wasn't mutual. I can tell you that, but I'll save that one for a different episode.

Well, we shared a lot. And when I think about that, we're together for a reason. And that's not just for a small period of time. But we got to make the best out of it. And again, well I tell you now that my relationship with her is at a level I didn't even know was possible with so much love, with so much respect. With so much everything. It's also in abundance.

So it's just where are you going for? If you got Aladdin, the lamp, if you can make 10 wishes without any regards to money, friendships, relationships, or whatever, what would 10 of those be? Write them down for yourself and start making a plan. I've got a lot of help off Tony Robbins. I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins. And he's got this RPM, rapid planning method. And if you stick to it and also decide, it's always a decision. Everything in life is a decision people. When you decide to live by those standards, you got to raise your standards. That's what he says every single time. And by raising your standards, you live up to the next level. And you can also enjoy next level. And that's living in abundance for me.

So I know Christmas is coming up tomorrow. I would like to take the opportunity here to wish you all the best, enjoy your time with family. Take a good look in their eyes and well, be humble. Be giving. Be all that you can and enjoy this season. It's lovely to be together and have a lot of time spending time with each other. And well then I feel so small when I sit on a simple chair or watch my kids play and having the best time of their life. And it almost makes me cry because that's why I'll do the things that I do. It's always for family. As I told you in the last episode, family comes first, always. So enjoy the holidays. I wish you all the best during Christmas. Enjoy it, be loved and love. And I'll see you guys next time.

Thank you very much.

Bye. Bye. Marcel Martens.

How to keep all balls in the air, during the holiday season. After our theme song, I've got to share my thoughts and experiences.

Hey, welcome back to the Cloud Secrets podcast, I am Marcel Martens and, well, we decided to start building our new office early next year, so wonderful decision especially during holiday season. Oh man, I don't know if I could keep all balls in the air, there are so much things to do and so little time. And that's what I would like to share with you. The way that I keep all balls literally in the air or make sure everything runs as smooth as possible.

Basically it all comes down to priorities. If you make an overview for, I like to do it by week and by day, the top three things I like or need to do today. Usually I write down seven or eight things but I always make sure I get the top three things done before I finish my day and same goes for week, I'll make a weekly overview as you know, I've got only three days a week at the office, the other two days I'll take care of the kids, and, if you want to know why, go a few podcasts back where I'll tell more about that.

I don't feel like repeating myself here today, but the more balls you need to keep in the air, the higher the probability is that one is going to drop one or more or many. So keep track of things. Delegate where you can, even if you think you need to do it yourself, just delegate it. And I was reading a lovely book, The One Minute Manager, which gave me some great insights on how to tap into the potential of your employees, or your colleagues is the way I call them, not only to let them feel good about their selves and feeling happy or in common, feel good.

Because when they feel good, they perform better and when they perform better, things go easier, smoother and you get things done. So today I'm going to move to our temporary office. We've bought some 20-foot containers that we've stuck together and that's our office for the next year. So today I'm going to move with the some colleagues and then we're going to start working in our temporary office so we can start building early next year when all the permits are... when we receive all the permits and I'll keep you guys posted.

But most importantly, first things first, for me it's always family that's on the first place. Make sure everything is done and in order and arranged and accounted for. Secondly comes my business and everything else comes afterwards. That's the way I manage things and do things and I'll put up a link to the book, for The One Minute Manager. It gave me great insight to manage in as little time as possible while keeping up qualities and quantities for the work that people, for the tasks, for our employees, you know.

So thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy this. If you do, please rate and subscribe. By the way, I would love to hear some feedback as well. I'll see you guys next time. Enjoy the holiday season. Bye bye. Marcel Martens.

How to fill up your webinar without paying too much for advertising. First we'll go through the theme show and then I'm going to talk all about it. Hi welcome back, Marcel Martens Cloud Secrets podcast.

I Hope you're doing well today. I am. Today I've been working on, well the next series of ads to fill up my webinars for one of my companies. And the secret that I want to share here is that if you target the right way, using, in my case Facebook advertising, you're going to save a lot of money and not only save a lot of money, also can fill up your webinar or online training or workshop or whatever you're doing and actually make money at the end of the webinar instead of generating a list of email addresses that you can send tons of emails afterwards. But never produce any sale. So for this one, I particularly use the webinar funnel, go to click funnels, go look up Russell Brunson and start digging there because that's the way it works and it works every single time. So today I've been messing around if I may say so with ads for quite some time to make it successful and make it run.

So today I thought I'd started doing some interviewing to get in the customer's hands to see what he thinks, how he feels about our always save in business suite because let me, let me go over that conversation that I had with one of our recent customers that we migrated to the always safe business suite. When you take a look at what he was, or they, cause it's a company, but they were using hosted email services with our hosted exchange solutions. Could be anyone for that matter. It doesn't matter. And he had a local solution for his files and he always already was using our backup services and our protection services, in this case ESET, but it was still using local file solution, as a storage solution. So he couldn't access his files or data anywhere other then his office or his show room cause he sells kitchens. And I believe we migrated him three weeks ago and today I gave him a call and asked if he got some a few minutes to help me out.

I got some questions for running my ads so I can target the right people, I can target the right interests and talk about their problems because people in this case that I would like to target is cold audience. You've got three types of audience, cold, warm and hot. Let me start with the hot ones. The hot ones are the ones, the ones that know you and know they've got a problem and that you've got a solution for them. So it's the low hanging fruits. If you just contact them or meet them at a, I don't know, at a birthday party or whatever, or with family and friends and they know you and they know what to do, if they present a problem in any conversation you well, you can immediately address that with the solution because you already got the credits and you know who you are. With warm traffic, it's people that don't know you, but know they have a problem, so there you... now I;m mixing things up.

Let me skip that all for a minute then for my ads because that's where we're going to talk about. I'm going to run them to cold traffic. People who don't know me and probably people who don't know they have a specific problem yet, so by that I start conversation with the problem and the problem, that was what I was trying to figure out in the phone call I had with my customer. Okay, what problems solved our suite for you that you weren't able to do before you used this particular suite and the answer was pretty fast and pretty easy. He said, I'm 100%, I've got 100% access to everything, so I will always get access to all my emails, all my files, all my offers, all my running projects, all, everything. I said, okay, that's cool. Sounds logical because that's what we sell. But by doing or by having that, what's the real difference for you?

Okay it's nice that you can access your files on your phone when you're sitting beside your wife, it's evening and the customer sends an email and you would just check it on your phone and don't need to go to the office or start your laptop or whatever. But what does it make? What's in it for the customer and for you? He thought for a minute. And then his answer was, I've got better oversight of all things that are running at the time. And secondly, I can improve quality because I can address things straight away instead of waiting for the next day or whatever. So quality goes up and I've got a better grip of running projects. I said okay, that's cool. Sounds nice. And it makes customers more happy? Yes, it does. Okay. So what does that mean for you and your business? Well, if we can improve quality, we can improve customer experience, we can improve customer, we can improve the quality of service, we can improve basically everything because we go next level with customer service instead of them having to wait till the next day.

So I got quicker response rates less faults, or less struggles within any project because I don't know with you but I, I've moved like five times now and I bought several kitchens, but every time I buy a kitchen they never deliver, or finish it on the day they come to place my kitchen. Now to me that's fricking annoying and I hate it when, especially when you're buying something expensive as, as a kitchen, you expect some kind of professionals that just put their money where their mouth is and finish the things they promise. I don't know why and I don't know how and I don't care. But to me it's very frustrating that they can't deliver it in one day or one single project. Always have half the support or some panels need to be replaced because they got damaged during transport or whatever. And he said, Oh, we've got the one who's putting the kitchens in the homes and putting it all together and putting all the equipment you know, those guys are making a real difference.

You've got, he's got this professional working crew that finishes up the kitchen and in one day or one run or whatever you call it, but so the customer, his customer, my customer's customer doesn't end up having after sales or support calls if you want to call them. I don't know in the kitchen business, but relating to our business, I'll keep it in support because he wants to spend time on his next customer and his next project. So if you can increase the quality upfront, you can increase the sales the day afterwards because he doesn't have to get involved and finish up business that he could take care of earlier. So in the end I said, okay, that sounds all great, but so what does this mean for you and your company. It increased the sales? I say yes, that's what I wanted to hear. And by increasing sales, it means making more money in less time by getting more efficient.

So this was a quite wonderful interview because we got to the essence of the thing that we, the possibility that we give by implementing our suite. And by doing so, you can sell more, you can sell better, he has less troubles, he has less support tickets or service that he needs to look after. He's got a happy customer who are not only customers, but starting to be raving fans and well, that's the best type of advertisement you can have in my opinion. If just people talk about you and your business in a way that well actually sells. And finally he's making more money, spending less time, which is absolutely fabulous to me. And coming back to my core value, my intention to leave everybody in a better state than when I first met them, that perfectly aligns with this. I get joy and happiness and feel warm about that I've been able to help him and his business doing more with less. And that's well that's all there is to it for me.

So that's what I'm going to put in my ads. I'm going to go for it. Our method, our suite improves quality, improves oversight, improves service, improves sales, improves your bottom line results and that's where I'll, I'll leave it for today. I'm going to share the results of the ads with you and I'll keep you guys posted. If you like this, by the way, I hope you would take the time to rate and subscribe so you don't miss out. And if you've got any questions, just drop comments below on this post, or go to cloud-secrets.com, look for the episode and there you can post a comment.

I always reply to comments, I love feedback, positive feedback by far and well I hope you can leverage this to your own good because it's so powerful, but you've got to ask the right questions and keep asking until, I always call it the onion. And you got to peel off layer by layer, by layer, by layer. So first he talks about quality, then he talks about oversight. Then he talks about making more sales and in the end, making more money. So now you've got to peel off all these layers to get to the core. And that's when you, you can feel it in your gut that, that when you arrive at the core, and that's the message that you're going to use in the advertisement, because that's what's going to trigger your new customers. So pretty, pretty wild episode. Thanks for being here and we'll see you guys next time thank you very much.

Bye. Marcel Martens

Unexpected delays explained within Azure. After theme song I'm going to talk all about it.

Hey, what's up? Marcel Martens here of the Cloud Secrets Podcast. Welcome back, glad you're here, hope you're doing fine. I just brought my kids to school and daycare so I'm off to the office now, but I want to share a story with you that was particularly difficult to locate and it's taken us several weeks, if you follow me, I did some WVD Podcasts or episodes about... Well, issues that we're having and our first impression, et cetera. But the thing that eventually... Well there were three core issues.

One was unexpected delays. We couldn't explain them, we saw routing issues within the network of Microsoft. So we're in the same region as the data center of Azure is. So we should have like low latency, I expect within 10 to 50 milliseconds. But when you follow the trace, you see that there's a major... well, bump and that's between two hops. There's a 100 plus millisecond delay and that's what's causing... Yeah, what should we call them.

The user can notice that there is a delay because the response times or responses on the screen aren't as fast as they expect to be. So we ended up opening a ticket with Microsoft and of course there was nothing wrong with their network as you might expect. Ohhh boy. It took some persuasion and persistence to get up higher in the chain and finally we arrived or spoke with an engineer at a level that makes sense and who bites his teeth in into this issue.

And he started digging and digging and digging and finally ended up that our IP space that we own, we bought several years ago, we bought our own IP space at Ripe and our IP block, as you can call it, a couple of thousand addresses that we use for public services for our customers and services of our own.

For this particular customer on their domain controllers we were forwarding the DNS to the Google DNS servers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for the secondary and while Google of course also forwards it's DNS to DNS root servers, they ended up forwarding it to the, no, let me tell it correctly.

When Google asks some other DNS server for the address, it also uses a source address and based on that source address, Microsoft routes you to a specific zone or region and they were giving me American IP address as a source. So we ended up being routed across the globe before we reached our virtual desktop.

That gave a delay, an extra delay of over 100 milliseconds, which was... pretty much a showstopper because the customer was experiencing these kinds of lags and interruptions or delays within, when they scroll through a web browser or whatever. Or typing in orders in their order system. And since we were doing a proof of concept for this particular customer, we need it to run as smooth as possible and at least with the same response time and performance as the current solution they're using. Besides that issue, we also had delays within the application that run over the express route and today's testing day and we're going to try if those are sold as well. If they are screen delay related or that they are latency related due to the Azure express route.

And the third one was a different application based on the Omnis (Tiger Logic) engine that was really starting, four or five times slower than any current desktop situation within Citrix. My opinion is that it has to do with the OS difference and now with the old solution they are using is based on 2008 R2 and the new solution is based on Windows 10. So there's a big difference in operating system.

And we finally managed to contact the developers and we're going to try to upgrade the software to the later version, which officially supports Windows 10. But the application on its own is pretty slow because I thought it was a client, a three tier application. So we've got a database server, we've got an application server, you've got the application running on the desktop, but they switch over to a different method so that most of this software and calculations are starting up or are loaded during startup of the application.

So that takes a longer time, doesn't sound really clear and convincing to me. So I gave them feedback and they're also testing to get these two applications run the same as in the current situation and when they do, then we got a successful proof of concept and we can move forward to migrate all applications towards WVD.

So a rather technical on this one, big takeaway was that Microsoft was routing traffic through the wrong region and that ended up getting higher delays or higher latency. Now Microsoft is changing our I block, our IP space is getting assigned to the region that we're in. So we always get the shortest path to the services and servers within Azure.

I hope you like this. If you do, by the way, please rate and subscribed because I like to increase my number of followers or and not my followers, there's no meaning or purpose on its own, but I like to help more IT professionals like yourself or business owners. So if you rate, subscribe, and share this, I get a broader reach and I can help more people. So thanks in advance and I'll see you guys next time. Thank you very much. Bye-bye, Marcel Martens.

How I write book chapters.

First to go through theme song, and then I'm going to tell you my dirty little secret on how I write my chapters for my book.

Hi guys. What's up? Marcel Martens here, Cloud Secrets podcast. Welcome back and today I'm going to share a little secret with you about how I write my chapters for my Cloud Secrets book.

As I shared before, I'm creating a little book for the secret formula that I use. If you just started to join or listen in, my secret formula is the formula that gave me basically everything that I needed and wanted back in those days. It was 2017. We were struggling to get by. I was living on my parents' pockets again as a 30 year olds male having a wife and three kids. I made some bad investments in hardware that didn't work, lost a lot of money there. And also we hired, well difficult and wrong employees.

That obviously we didn't know when we were hiring them, but we were paying them way too much money. So we ended up didn't getting paid ourselves and you can only last for that long. So I had to go to my mom's and dad and well put my heart on the table and ask them if they could help me out. Give me monthly, I don't know, a lot money to pay my mortgage, my bills. So. And luckily they did. And that's also when, in that desperate times, that me and my wife figured out that formula that we using still today. And that has made it possible for me to be able to be debt free within a half year, in six months. So and besides that, living the life of my dreams and having a three day work week. So again I can enjoy holidays, all time. We go four times year, so.

We love it, we like it and we keep doing it as long as it works, so. And that's what I'm writing my book about, my secret formula, the Cloud Secrets formula. And just to share a quick secret here, I don't write books, I'm an IT professional, an IT guy. I'm basically a nerd, so I'm not a linguistic, whatever, that is just to going to sit down on his desk and write a book. So I bet you could figure, right.

But to be able to share all this with you. To... Well, I've got a whole mission and my mission is to get every business safe online or safe in business. By doing so we've developed, or by wanting that, I've developed the OSA home business suite and my reach only goes that far. So I would like to teach you that method. So not only can you run a profitable cloud service business and do the things you want to do, you also end up with well, raving fans instead of complaining customers. Because this one works every single time without any failure. And that's what I'm writing a book about. And instead of just sitting by my desk and started typing or started writing, I record them on my iPhone. That's all I use. No fancy and expensive equipment. 80% of all things I record, I'll use my iPhone and then I'll upload the transcription. Well, first to my notebook. Where I use Adobe Audition to, well clean up the audio file.

Just maybe nice to share. Back in the day, I don't know when I was 12 till 16 or so, I thought myself as a DJ. And as you probably also know I'm from the Netherlands, the Dutch guy, Amsterdam and here in the Netherlands, well DJs are almost number one export product that we have in the Netherlands because we grow a lot of successful DJs, especially in dance and the techno scene. But now I'm dwelling of... And that days I was wanting to become one of those as well. It didn't work out. And I thought IT would be better for me, but I've got some small audio skills, I know, what things mean. So that's why I do the optimization of the audio files myself when I got the time and then I'm going to send them to Rev.com. Rev.com transcribes your audio for a buck a minute.

So just $1 a minute and somebody is, I don't know, typing it all out for you. So you can literally just talk to your phone, talk about the content of your book and then you send it off to Rev. So if you are speaking for 15 minutes, it's just going to cost you 15 bucks and then you get the transcription. And all you've got to do is read over it, fix some minor errors and you're done. So that's my dirty little secret about how I write my book chapters. And I do them chapter by chapter. Otherwise it would be too much at once. Afterwards I can add the text to the book. I've got someone for me doing it. Also a lot of freelance, like all those lancers, you got Upwork, you got freelance.com all these kinds of lance sites where you can hire people to do things for you.

They're not particularly expensive, in my opinion. So you can focus on the things you want to do or where you're good at and let other people take care of the things you don't like or you don't got time for it. So that's my dirty little secret about how I write book chapters. I say, if I say, "Take advantage of it. Use it to your own good." And I'll see you guys next time. By the way, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, YouTube, or on the blog. I don't care if you like to read, listen, watch. Pick your option and give some feedback. I love feedback. And otherwise, if you want me to share my experience or opinion on something, or talk about something, leave a comment down below the post on cloud-secrets.com. I always respond and I'll take it into consideration about making an episode about it.

So thank you very much and talk to you guys next time.

Bye bye, Marcel Martens.

Keep track and grow, after the theme song, I'm going to talk all about it. Hi, welcome back to the Cloud Secrets Podcast, this is Marcel Martens and today I'm going to talk about why you need to keep track of that what you want to grow and as soon as you start keeping track, let me give you an example, it's the same with with sporting. I love the cycle and when I cycle and I know I cycle around 30 kilometers an hour, but when you start keeping track, every single time you want to be a little bit faster, go a little bit further, have a little bit smaller heart rate. Have a... You know.

As soon as you start measuring things, you improve and it can be tiny bits and can be huge steps and when you take a look back at it, especially with sports if you're just starting out, it's hard, you're going slow, you're out of breath, you probably know what I'm talking about but after a while and after repetition or practicing enough, you can do longer runs and your heart rate starts to slow or doesn't increase that much, your speed increases and that's not only with sports, if you keep track of your sales rate, if you keep track of the number of users that you serve, if you keep track of the amount of data you backup, I don't really care, it doesn't really matter what it is but as soon as you start tracking it, you can focus on improving it or you're automatically focus on improving it.

So my experience is that whenever you start tracking something, whatever it is, it always improves because it's like human physiology, you know, everything that we measure we need to do more efficient, faster, better, greater. It doesn't matter and I'm pretty sure you know what I mean and you experience the same way and I'm a tech guy and I love all the tech stuff that comes out and if there was a chip available that I could implant in my body to communicate with my system, my laptop, my whatever, I would be one of the first to have it implanted in me as weird or as psycho as it may sound but I love new technology. Shouldn't be sounding weird as an IT professional.

So I first used my iPhone for my cycling runs, you know, and well, that measured some sort of data but then I bought my iWatch and since I'm using my iWatch, I bought an extra app, a cycling app, I believe it's Strava and with that I can track more data and you've got a summit so you can see how far you are compared to other periods or other weeks or months or whatever so you kind of feel bad for yourself that you didn't train as much as you did in the summer and now it's fall, you know? And it's the same with issues. With issues, I mean support tickets. If you could keep track of support tickets, you can maybe do a weekly newsletter or a video or a Facebook Live or whatever with the top five support tickets that you've handled that week and by that, when all the customers see it, they don't need call you because they already know the answer and that's the same with keeping track and improving.

It automatically improves not only you but also your customers and get them to a point of well self-serving, you know, whatever it is, you can, as I said, there are many ways you can do it with Facebook Live, you can grant them or give them access to a knowledge base which is only available for customers you know? It's a lot of benefit that you can use in your sales and so many, many ways to improve customer experience.

So big goal or big takeaway for today is track whatever you do and you automatically grow whatever you track so that's it for today, I'm going to go pick up my kids and enjoy the evening so talk to you guys next time. If you like this, by the way, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, whatever you use, YouTube. Sign up for the newsletter on our blog, cloud-secrets.com and so we can reach a broader audience than we already do. We're getting around 25 to 100 downloads a day at this moment so, we're growing pretty nice. I would love to go a bit faster, that's why I keep track of it and well, just rate and subscribe then it can reach more people and I'll see you guys next time. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening. Bye bye, Marcel Martens.

Running applications within Azure or over an ExpressRoute connection. After a theme song, I'm going to talk all about it.

Hi, this is Marcel Martens of The Cloud Secrets Podcast. Welcome back. Today we're going to test... Well if you listen to a few podcasts ago, I was talking about the disk speed within WVD. It was a bit disappointing and we were trying to figure it out, why that was happening. We came to the conclusion that the bigger the disc you take, the more IOPS you get. So we expanded the disc to one terabyte and choose Premium SSD, and with that we got all the IOPS that we need. But the application was still starting... I don't know, it took like 40 to 50 seconds before we get the login screen of that particular application. And we did all kinds of network traces and used Wireshark to see what was going on.

But what we saw was that, in the end, it only the last two seconds of the startup phase, only in those two seconds the application was using network traffic to our data center. So from WVD within Azure to our own data center where all the application servers of this particular customer are hosted and... Well, that's a bit odd because when whatever application needs 40 seconds or 50 seconds to start, in my opinion, that's absurd, these days. I should get a login screen or whatever in a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds, but that's it. And when we take a look at the startup time within Citrix, the current solution the customer's using, there it takes like four seconds to pop up with the login screen. So we're trying to figure out what the difference is, and for that, we've run out of options because we did all these traces, and increased speed, and increased IOPS, and fine tuned everything there is to tune.

But the last thing is that maybe it's due to latency, and while we got a really slow latency... It's a couple of hundred kilometers to the Azure Western Europe location, and our latency from our data center to the actual WVD desktop is around seven to nine milliseconds. And of course within Citrix, between the application and the application server, the latency is less than one millisecond, of course, because they're running next to each other.

So last week we set up the Disaster Recovery Synchronization Tools. I don't know what you call them within Azure. And I believe my colleague yesterday finished up the migration, or the synchronization, of the current application server. And then today we're going to switch servers, so we're going to make the server on the Azure side their primary server, shut down the server within our data center, and then we can test what the application startup time is within WVD connecting to that Azure Application Server or VM.

And my guess is, or my hope actually, is that it starts up within four or five seconds as well because then we've got a business case and we can migrate all their application servers, or all their servers, all their VMs, towards Azure and start building the total WVD solution, including all their application servers.

So that's a rather technical one, again. And I'm going to follow up with this one. Maybe at the end of today or maybe on Monday, it's Friday by the way now, but by the time you hear this, it's going to take a few weeks because I create them in advance and I'm pretty curious... I really hope this fixes the startup time issues because otherwise the proof of concept of WVD in this particular case is a dead one, because it's not going to work. And they're not going to wait 40 seconds or 50 seconds for an application to start. And other applications as well.

Especially with their sales... Well, their ERP system. They use Ax, Dynamics of Microsoft. And well, when you hit an order form or enter an order and want to enter the next one, you've got a few seconds delay and that's not acceptable.

We're going to test with this application. If this run starts out fine, and then starts up within the excepted time frames, then we're going to make a business case to move all their applications toward Azure. And then we can finally migrate them from the Citrix Solutions to WVD.

So I'll keep you posted. Thanks for listening. And if you like this, by the way, please rate and subscribe. You do me a huge favor, not only for me, but also for all the IT professionals to be able to find this podcast because it's little known as at this time. So please share, like, rate, subscribe, do whatever you want with it. Shout about it, and I'll see you guys next time. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Marcel Martens

Burnout beating tricks all business owners and team leaders need to know. After the theme song, I'm going to talk all about it.

To get beyond self-confidence, you need three great ways to onboard new customers smoothly and plan the onsite migration steps. By doing so, first, let me give you an example. If you've followed me for a while, I've been coaching and, well, making systems for our staff so they can do all the work, because I only have a three day work week here due to my private situation at home. If you want to know more, go back a few podcasts and I'll explain all about it. But for now let's stick to the subject, and that is why it's so important to coach and prepare every single step that you need to take during a migration or onboarding a customer.

Since our staff is doing it for like two years now and they get pretty routine that everything seems to run like a smooth machine and all parts are running smoothly, but last week something happened and made me go figure where did it go wrong? Just to be honest, one of our staff members was planned for a migration that should've taken six hours on a Monday morning. We actually spent, I don't know, maybe two and a half days, so we've been analyzed and go over it and talked about every step that he took towards the migration and on those days itself, because the migration started on Monday. At the end of Monday we had contact and I asked him, "Okay, are you almost done?" And he told me, "No, things are not going as well as I thought it would be. Running into some issues. Do you mind if I go back tomorrow morning to finish the job?" I said, "Sure, no problem, because we can't leave unfinished work. We need to go back and finish what we've started."

And then my gut feeling was telling me, oh, there is something going wrong here, and that particular customer is not only a customer but they're also personal friends of mine. I like to hang out with them, our kids play together. So it makes me extra, well, that gut feeling was boiling up pretty good because, well, especially when you know somebody personally, you want to exceed in your expectations, right? You want to migrate them as smooth as possible and make sure everything is going okay. In this case, it wasn't okay at all. It was horrible. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, and the only thing you can do is fix it as fast as possible.

After that Tuesday he said, "Okay, Wednesday, I need to go to a different customer but I need a few, like a half an hour or an hour to finish it on Thursday." I said, "Oh boy, what did go wrong?" And I didn't have time to go over with it with him straight away. Friday we were catching up on all of the other things that we didn't finish because of the delays during the migration. Friday evening, I would go with the business owner to a soccer game and drink some beers and have fun, but of course on the way there he told me what went wrong and how it should've been in his opinion, and I'd take note of all the remarks that he made. On Monday morning, I first started asking my colleague, "Okay, let's go upstairs and let's talk about it, because last week was horrible. Not to, well, slap you, but we need to make sure that we learn from our mistakes. By that I mean, what can we change in the current system that we use?"

By system I mean steps, my method, the checklists that we use, everything from the moment the customer signs a contract until we are finished migrating the customer. All those steps together, I call my system, and somewhere in that system we've got a gap, because I like it to be flawless and maybe I'm a perfectionist, but this was a huge gap. So I sat down with him and I said, "Okay, what did you do different than other migrations?" He said, "Well, while I was there, we had some issues during the setup phase and they lost their local Outlook profile. So I needed them to re-add their current or the old Outlook profiles, and I made a mistake there to only sync for the last one year instead of everything."

So when he was starting exporting the mailboxes on Monday morning, he only exported the last year and not the entire mailbox. So on Tuesday, the customer was missing all their emails older then one year, and then you're already one step behind. I said, "Okay, but that's something you run into. What did you do differently than other migrations?" He said, "I don't know. I was working on one workstation and then the other user start asking questions, so I ran over there to fix those questions, and then the other user would ask, 'Okay, how far is it, can I start working? Can you finish it?'"

"So you're running around without a plan?" "Yes," he said. I said, "Okay, why? Did you make a plan, what you would do in which order on that Monday?" "No." I said, "Why not? We always make a plan." He said, "Yeah, I don't know. I just thought I had it in my head and I didn't really think about it."

So that's the essence of today's episode. Sorry, I'm a little cold, having a cold. We need to make sure that every single time before we go to a customer to start a migration, that we know which steps to take when we arrive and in what order, because now he deviates from the plan and starts running around like a chicken without a head because people are asking his attention or time. That's what I always tell and teach our employees. I just want them, okay, make a plan, stick to it, and when people got questions, write them down and tell them, "Okay, I'm currently busy with this, this, or that. When I'm finished, I'm going to make time for all your questions, so I'm going to write them down and I'll get back to you when I'm done with the tasks at hand."

That was pretty much an eye-opener for him, but I say why? That's why I need to stay coaching our employees, because at first they are, now he loses a lot of self-confidence because, well, he effed up, if I call it that way to keep this podcast clean, and he knows it and he doesn't feel well about it. It's nice to see that it's doing something with him, but it shouldn't happen, because not only did we lose one and a half day that I can't bill because the customer won't pay for it, the customer was not able to work as he expected to, and especially when it comes down to friends, you don't want it because people start talking, and well, that is not what you want.

But just wanted to share our experience with you here. I tend to be vulnerable, explain that not everything goes as smooth as we would like every single time, but for him it was, again a big lesson because now he knows why it went so horribly, and next time, we agreed upon it together that next time he will make a plan again just the day before we go over to the customer, and that will outline all the steps that need to be done, and we use the four eyes principle. So he's going to make them and somebody else is going to check and verify them if all steps are there that are necessary to run the migration as smooth as possible. So that was part one and or bullet one, making a plan is vital important.

The second one is this customer was using our old hosted Exchange environment and he decided to export the mailbox using Outlook instead of using Exchange to export PSTs. In this case, we only exported one year instead of two or three years. I don't know how long that business is operational, but when you have Exchange available and you can start an export there, then you know for sure you've got everything and don't miss out on any data or emails that are synchronized locally in the OST file. We also changed our checklists that when Exchange is available, we always use the Exchange export to PST followed by the Azure Copy.

That's actually, well, the third step. By using the Azure Copy, you can see when imports go wrong or how many errors you have during the import, and then if you've got like, I don't know, 100,000 plus items in your mailbox and three items go wrong, I usually don't care about them because those are small emails or synchronized reports that failed or whatever. I always tell the customer that this many errors occurred during the import, so if they miss anything, they know why. And that's basically it. I don't want to get a call or a support ticket, "Hey, I'm missing email here," because first off it's going to take an awful lot of time to find that piece of content, and if it's an email and a calendar item or a contact, I don't care. Secondly, I can't bill those hours. So make sure you inform your customers so you can always point back at that conversation, so they know that certain things didn't import without any particular reason.

So just to recap here, always make a plan before you go to your customer and start the migration. Take it with you, stick to it, and everything that gets added to it just put it on the bottom of the list, of your to-do list. Secondly, when you have a Exchange at hand, you should always use Exchange to export your PSTs in combination with the Azure Copy to import your email into Office 365. By all this, you gain self-confidence for your staff, for your employees, and by that you can onboard customers smoothly and plan the onsite migration step by step by step.

So that's it for today. I hope you can put this into practice and use it yourself, and if you've got any feedback or comments, please let me know. Go to cloud-secrets.com, look for episode 30 and at the bottom you can leave comments. Otherwise, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes. Give me a four or five star rating so other people can find me as well, so we can help more people actually exceed expectations for their customers and prevent burnouts with your staff to boost their self-confidence.

If you're interested, all my steps that I use every single day in my company M - IT Services, I decided to start teaching my method. And for that I've created the Cloud Secrets Course. If you're interested, you can go to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. Again, that's cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind, and there you can opt in for the course. Afterwards, I will personally contact you, see if we're a fit, because I will only want highly motivated and people who will stick to the end. I'll see if we're a fit, and if we're a fit, I'm going to invite you to join the course. So thanks again. Please rate and subscribe, and I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye. Marcel Martens.

What is the difference between storage we currently use within Citrix and the storage that is being used within WVD? Because it seems to be a lot slower and after a theme song, I'm going to show you exactly what the difference is or how we do it versus WVD. So this is one of the episodes you want to watch. Go to cloud-secrets.com and look for episode 29. And there you'll find a link to the video because I'm doing a whiteboard session or behind scenes, if you want to call it and show you the difference between storage in WVD and the current Citrix environment.

So the big question is this, how do you become the cloud expert in your area without having to make any investments in hard and software who provides customers with a secure cloud foundation? How do you start in a way that let you offer your products and services and start making money straight from the beginning? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Marcel Martens and welcome to Cloud Secrets.

So the question is, if the storage that we currently use within Citrix, of that is directly attached to the Hyper-V environment or that it's connected in another way. So that's the question and that's what I'm going to explain here because we want to know the difference between Citrix and the way storage works comparing to WVD.

So now we've got our storage, on top of that storage we've got our servers and on top of that servers we've got our VMs. Storage, server, server, server, and one of those VMs is our PVS, provisioning services system for Citrix. When you got a Citrix VM here, what it basically does is it starts using the network connection and the C-drive is actually located on the PVS drive. So this is like VHD, which will be transported over the network and Citrix will start and it will only use files at that time. So this one is probably 80 gigabytes or so, but for starting Windows, in this case, 2008 R2, it probably only needs 1.6 gigabytes or whatever. So that's what's going to be transferred over the network to be able to start that VM.

Afterwards when this VM is going to start an application, it also goes to this VHD and put those files back. Since this is a file server which uses caching, the hot blocks within this VHD will be in the cache in the memory of the file server. So while this is being 10 gigabytes or more, it's always going to be a lot faster than when it needs to get the data here, get it to the PVS virtual machine towards the Citrix server.

Within WVD, we have no knowledge. Let me get a different color. Within WVD, we don't have any knowledge of the hardware that's below. We see very small read latency, right? Okay, so 0.1 read latency, but the average write latency is over 50, which is pretty high. Here it's the other way around. In our current Citrix environment, we've got like the average write delay is around, I don't know, 0.8 or one and the average read delay is around, do you know the number? No? I believe we'll say 0.30 or so.

We've got some problems here with some applications that are starting a lot slower, within WVD they are starting a lot slower than on the current Citrix environment, so that's what we're trying to figure out and see where the problem is existing so we can fix it. So that's it for today. Hope you join me next time. Bye bye. Marcel Martens.

If you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot, that's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also, right? That's also good, but the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you can implement it in a way that always gives you the same result. Right? That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula. So I created this special mastermind called Cloudmind to get you on track with the right services. More importantly, the right to migrate your customers in a way that guarantees success every single time. Want to come? There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person. You can hold your spot by going to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. Again, that's cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind.

Documenting my journey. So welcome back to the Cloud Secrets Podcast. I am Marcel Martens, and after the theme song, I'm going to talk about why I'm documenting my journey.

So if you listen regularly to these podcasts or follow me for quite a while, you probably know that due to the illness of my wife, I made a lot of change. I had to make a lot of changes. Sorry for the confusion because, well we got daycare for three days a week, and we didn't, well have kids to put them in daycare all week. So my wife and I decided that three days is the max that we, well use daycare or afterschool daycare. So while the two oldest ones are at school, the youngest one was still at home and, well, she wasn't able to take care of family to give the house pretty much nothing.

As lousy as it sounds, I don't mean in like that because she, she had seven years without one night of constant sleep. So for seven years long, she didn't sleep longer than three hours a night in one row. When I go to bed, I'll wake up the following morning so I get a six, seven hour sleep or five hours sleep or whatever. For my wife, it was just the max was three hours and then she was awake and thinking about all the issues, we're having or problems, back in the days, go back and listen to a few podcasts ago, there I explained the whole story. But at that time, just to give you, in a nutshell, we were almost bankrupt and things weren't going so well with the business, with our marriage, with everything because it was just literally on the edge.

I was thinking. Why am I doing this? Why did I start this business? Why do I want to be a business owner? All of those questions. And you probably have some yourself if you think, and that's where eventually my biggest why. And if you want to know more, go to Simon Sinek, Find your Why. It's a pretty good book, can help you. Personal development. Go to Tony Robbins, he's the master in personal development. So if you want to get ahead quickly, I can recommend those two.

So for me, my why was to leave anyone in a better state than when I first met them. So if you ask me what would you do? Even if you don't get money for it, my answer will be to help people or businesses or whatever. I get joy out of helping others. Moving towards the next step so they can do more in less time. They can do things more efficiently, I don't care, anything to get them in a better state than when I first met them. And my mission with one of my companies, MIT services, is that we want to help businesses get safe in business. So everything that they do with IT systems, that has to be safe so that nobody can break in or hack their systems or spamming using their domain names or whatever kind of thing you can think of when it comes to IT security.

I'm a big believer in everything that you create is yours and yours alone until you decide to share it and not for anyone else to take. So that is why I've created the Always Safe in Business Suite.

Once again, go to a few podcasts back and I'll explain everything about it, but the essence here is how can I extend my reach without growing my company even bigger where a small company, we've got a number of staff. Well at this time, because I'm still working three days a week, I don't have all the time to give directions to all the personnel or staff. So for now it's fine like it is. I don't want to grow any further. We've got a nice team, I'm proud of the team. I coach them myself. We get to do great things and help a lot of people and a lot of businesses, but for now we've reached the max that we can handle in the current situation and for me to take it to the next level is going to occupy a lot of my time that I don't have at the moment.

So I was thinking what other way is there to extend my reach and that is why I decided to create Cloud Secrets and with Cloud Secrets I want to share my method that I've developed over the years in MIT services so I could extend my reach because if I could teach other businesses or other business owners my method then they can get the same result for their customers as I'm getting here, so that way we can help more customers together than I can do by myself at this time.

For that reason. Also, I've decided to start this podcast of vlogging and blogging and everything you can think of because I'm an IT engineer, professional, expert or whatever you want to call it, but I'm not a marketing guy or whatever. So to put in, I call it the Cloud Secrets course, and within that course I will teach you every single step of my method and I go way, way further because I also teach you how to get new customers, how to get leads, how to make sure you exceed expectations every single time and all that is packed into this program, the Cloud Secrets course and well, my journey to fill up those courses is what I'm documenting using these podcasts and vlogs and blogs or whatever. So I'll share my ups, I'll share my downs, even do behind the scenes in one of my companies, when I teach or coach, my staff or personnel or employees or whatever you want to call them, I take these little video shots of pretty much deep dives on technical things that they need to address at that time.

So three years ago we decided that I no longer touch the buttons and by that we mean I no longer go sit behind the keyboard and do it myself. I just educate and by that we mean we teach our staff and personnel how to do it and I can help them when they get stuck, we make sure they get unstuck and they can proceed or make progress and that's the way we do it.

So now I invite you to, if you're interested to join to apply, that's what I mean because we use applications for that. I mean, we see if we are a fit or not, because I only want to work with people are going for that next level who are committed to their personal success and it will go in all the way to make their success almost guaranteed.

It's all based upon the work you do. But when you follow my steps, I guarantee success. So if you want to join, go to cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. Again, that's cloud-secrets.com/cloudmind. Then you can apply for the course and I will personally go over your application and reach out to you. I'm going to call you and ask a lot of questions and if you're a fit, I'm going to invite you to join the course.

I keep documenting my journey and sometimes we get new projects, which I think are interesting for you. So that's why I share my experience based on WVD today's testing day. So at 3:00 PM while we're going to show the customer the first results, so I'll create some stories for that one or maybe even a behind the scenes video and I'll talk to you guys later. Oh please. By the way, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes or provide likes on YouTube or SoundCloud or wherever you are listening or watching this, you're doing not only need a big favor, but also all the IT professionals who would like to learn what I teach or I have to offer because people can find us much easier if we get a lot of reviews or likes.

So, please rate us with a five star or whatever you think suits and subscribe, so you get alerts or popups when we launch new episodes. We launch episodes twice a week. Try to keep up with those because it's costing me a lot of time every single week to keep it up with two posts a week, but I will do my best to make sure that keeps happening and I'll talk to you next time. Okay. Thank you very much.

Bye bye Marcel Martens.