SunZu – The Art of Business. A new social network launching January 2013.

Written by Lyndon Wood. Founder and CEO

When I started my first real business at the age of 19 back in August 1990, I was young and a little greedy shall I say to the whole economic climate which was just entering a recession, and to the industry I had setup in as well as many other things. One thing that I did have though was a hunger to be in business, not to be a multi millionaire but to own my own time.

Over the many years I have always had a real desire and passion, to pass on my knowledge and my learning’s to those who have embarked on, or thinking of embarking on the same journey. I take great pleasure to assist and inspire business owners for growth which ultimately benefits their families and livelihood.

5 years ago I started to develop a business social network called CEOwner.com. It took me 18 months to build from scratch and a fair bit of hard earned cash. I then shelved it! I decided that I did not have the time or inclination to start something from scratch like this.

4.5 months ago the opportunity came up to acquire Ecademy.com. I did so in just 2 weeks, after some basic due diligence was carried out. I acquired it for two simple reasons:

1. To fulfil my passion and desire to inspire and assist others in their quest to be successful (that means different things to different people).

And

2. I saw an opportunity to build something of value long term (of course I want an ROI I am in business

But first comes real heavy investment from my pocket. I am estimating circa £1 to 1.5m before any return happens and that’s if it happens, but I enjoy what I do and am passionate about it.

I knew the platform was old technology, in fact some 11 years old. I had planned strategically to develop something brand new namely SunZu The Art of Business, SunZu.com. This allows me to fulfil that passion and desire to touch thousands or even millions of business owners worldwide, and to encourage collaboration, sharing of experiences, platform to learn and trade, but not forgetting that people run businesses so I do not want it to become purely an online platform. There will be gatherings and events too.

The vision for SunZu is to become the friendliest and largest social business network with a voice in the UK and worldwide, with ethics and morals. I want to create a great environment whereby everyone can benefit some or a lot depending on how they choose to use it.

There is no reason why every business in the country should not be on SunZu, if they are serious about business (they should be). The more people you speak to, the more successful you become as the very true saying goes.

I have chosen SunZu to be a subscription model for a simple reason and that is I believe that serious business owners will pay the nominal sum each month, whereas the not so serious will not. Used properly, which is easy, then the subscription is paid back 10 times over and more. There is no advertising on the site either, again I believe a subscription model should not bombard members with adverts. I surveyed hundreds of business owners and developed the business, and its functions and features with the feedback I received. A real important aspect of any business.

My focus has been doing things much better rather than adding loads of features. I have made the functionality more functional and the site real easy to navigate and… a little different to the traditional way sites are built.

It has its very own uniqueness and with pretty much every aspect being Google friendly with SEO benefits and trading elements to attract new customers and to help you create new customers. There is a social chat section so you can chat about anything and build relationships properly.

As SunZu gains momentum and achieves an accelerated growth then more features will be added and all of which will again be in consultation with business owners. The possibilities are endless and all in the quest to develop businesses and get as many as possible into a growth and profitable phase.

The last 4 months has not been an easy one, with a takeover comes uncertainty and with a culture that was set in a certain way, made it all the more challenging. Change should not be managed but the message you put out should be strategic and consistent as well as constant and I believe that has been achieved so far and will continue because I believe in what I am doing, and believe that businesses require what is being delivered, after all it is what they asked for

Written by Lyndon Wood

Author of Diary of a Fortune Hunter which hit Amazon top 20 on its first day

Other Business interests include;

Chairman and CEO of the following.
Moorhouse Group Ltd
Constructaquote.com
Xbroker
Moorlife Ltd
L & S Investments