Spring 2018 North County Elevate My Business Challenge Alumni
Fall 2018 Founders Bootcamp 3rd Place Winner
Company Website: www.bluecloudusa.com
Company Bio: BlueCloud is a San Diego-based telecommunications company providing fully customized Voice over IP phone systems and services to small and medium-sized businesses nationwide. BlueCloud handles all of your business communication needs, including voice, texting, and virtual faxing, making it simple for you to connect and scale your business. BlueCloud will also help you lower your monthly communication bill and has no monthly contracts. BlueCloud provides world class customer support and puts the customer experience at the forefront, making their expert support team available to you at all times.
BlueCloud was founded five years ago by husband and wife team, Meir Singer and Miriam Stein. Meir graduated from Touro University in New York City with a degree in Business Development & Management and started working in Telecom immediately after graduating. He has been in the telecom industry for over 10 years. He started off managing customers and providing technical support and then moved into a sales and management position at a large publicly traded telecom company. Meir became an expert in the telecom space and understood the industry and where it needed to improve.
Miriam has a background in Mathematics & Finance and Business Marketing and always dreamed of starting her own company. In fact, she started many businesses as a young kid and eventually used those earnings after graduating from University of California-San Diego to relocate and start her professional career in New York City.
Both Meir and Miriam established early on in their marriage that one day they would like to build a successful business from the ground up. It was just about identifying a need and finding something they both loved and cared about. They realized that there was something missing in the telecom market. Customer experience, on-boarding, and satisfaction was not a priority for corporate telecom companies. This frustrated Meir and Miriam to the point that it led them to open up their own telecom company in 2014. Their goal was to provide the best customer service for their business customers and to be the last telecom provider a business ever needs. BlueCloud is set on delivering the best experience for their customers and they make all business decisions with the customer in mind. Between Meir and Miriam’s combined background and talents, BlueCloud successfully launched and has been growing rapidly ever since.
The name BlueCloud originated from the fact that their services are all cloud based, along with their love for the color blue. BlueCloud addresses key business communication issues and provides robust solutions. BlueCloud’s customers want a voice solution that works, one that is scalable, flexible, and has exceptional customer support. This means businesses want the ability to expand their services in the future with ease. The business customers that reach out to BlueCloud want someone else to take care of everything telecom related so that they have more time to focus on their business. Convenience is the major competitive advantage that BlueCloud has over other players in the market. BlueCloud offers onsite installations, training and offers handholding level support so businesses don’t have to worry about their telecom needs at all.
Since they started in 2014, BlueCloud has doubled their revenues every year. The growth trajectory of BlueCloud has been a major accomplishment for them. After joining the Elevate My Business Challenge and the Founders Bootcamp, BlueCloud was able to develop a roadmap with processes. Some of the challenges that Meir and Miriam have faced has been dealing with personnel changes. The right people were not joining the team, so they had many tough decisions to let people go once they realized they weren’t the best fit. It was extremely difficult for Meir and Miriam to fire some people, and they wouldn’t wish that for anybody, but it was the best thing to do for the health of the business. They did not have all the tools to analyze if they had had A-players on their team. Through trial and error, BlueCloud has been able to make the right hires and to notice red flags much quicker than in the past. Miriam and Meir like to learn from their mistakes and own up to them, but not repeat them. They found key takeaways from bad-hiring choices and regrouped when making the right hiring decisions. They now have a team of all A-list players and are seeing the benefits of having such a strong team in place.
Originally the idea to join the Elevate My Business Challenge for Meir and Miriam was to work on their proven business model by learning how to scale. They felt limited in their knowledge of how to grow a small business. A lot of the processes that BlueCloud has in place today is based on the knowledge gained from the Elevate My Business Challenge and Founders Bootcamp. Since participating in both programs, Meir and Miriam have seen tremendous growth by adding more employees, adding new recurring revenue streams, increasing margins and much more. Moving forward, they both feel extremely prepared to take BlueCloud to new heights. Mostly in part to the fact that they know every element of their business, while having all of their processes streamlined and organized. They have an overall strategic plan with goals in place and the tools to accomplish them at their disposal.
The mission right now is to expand across Southern California. As entrepreneurs, Meir and Miriam have realized that the key to growth is to seek out mentors and strategic partners. Both programs assisted BlueCloud in gaining confidence, understanding tools, and utilizing different resources. Meir and Miriam believe that both programs are necessary for small businesses, because both offer something different. The Challenge program really taught them how to think bigger and identify goals, while also giving them a playbook of how to achieve those goals. The Bootcamp offers actual tactics each week of how to use these different tools to their advantage to accomplish their overall goals.
Some words of wisdom from Miriam and Meir for other small business owners are that you have to treat your business like your child. It is extremely important to always look for improvements in your company even if you are doing well. Find ways to expand and make more partnerships. When BlueCloud first joined the EMBC, they already had achieved impressive growth, but they knew that there was more to gain and more to learn. Meir and Miriam’s gratitude towards LIFT is very touching for our company. Being able to assist small businesses in the community like BlueCloud has been a rewarding experience. We won’t be surprised when BlueCloud expands across the California region. If you are a small business owner and you want to improve your Telecom communications, then please go to www.bluecloudusa.com.
