Journey To $100 Million

Erik was having a conversation with the president and CEO of Visit Norfolk and one of the things he was talking about was an advertising campaign where they used social media to very quickly experiment with the messaging and different markets they were trying to reach. It allowed him to do small experiments and tweak based on the data that came back. When he found a market that was working, he could invest more in digital advertising and traditional advertising - that is much more expensive and much harder to tweak over time. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million F

Kevin had the pleasure of sitting down with Ross Dannenberg, an attorney who specializes in video game law. In this episode, he talks about the cool things he’s doing to grow his business. He grew up as a gamer and when he started practicing law, he found the cross-section between the two. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Whenever you are going to advertise and put dollars behind your messaging, make sure that your message is on point and that your ideal audience knows specifically that that message is for them. In this episode, Kurt Krause, the president and CEO of Visit Norfolk, talks about how he created a marketing plan that reached people that fit a very specific criteria to target people to come to Norfolk. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — For more information on the s

Recently Kevin got to interview Gabe McCoy, a co-founding member and co-managing partner from Pierce McCoy, a business law firm based in Norfolk, VA. In this episode, he talks about how important it is to build relationships in business and create a referral network. The referral source matters. If you don’t do a top-quality, world-class job, the referral source is going to hear about it. It adds an extra layer of accountability because if you drop the ball, there’s a high chance that your other clients are going to hear about it. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Mi

Erik recently spoke with Kurt Krause, the president and CEO of Visit Norfolk. His job is to get people to come to the Norfolk area and as you can imagine, COVID has posed a bit of a challenge for him. Now more than ever, increased communication with your staff is so important. When we started working from home in March, we were more disconnected than ever. Being remote required a new level of communication with staff. Meetings became more frequent because we needed to communicate more than ever. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcas

Recently Kevin got to interview Gabe McCoy, a co-founding member and co-managing partner from Pierce McCoy, a business law firm based in Norfolk, VA. In this episode, he talks about how important it is to build relationships in business and build a referral network. Gabe says that their company’s growth has been unorthodox. As they’ve grown, it’s been about keeping up with the demand of the market. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — For more information on th

Grant Cardone has a philosophy that you should always say yes when you’re in a sales situation. No matter what the prospect requests, the answer is yes. He also encourages you to just take the deal and figure it out later. However, Erik has noticed throughout the years that when we take work that we’re not familiar with, there’s a high probability that we’re going to screw things up. Here at Array Digital, we work with a specific type of client: law, medical, or home services. That’s our sweet spot. Whenever we take on something outside of that or a service that we don’t do, there’s a good chance we’re going to screw it up. And we’ve learned this the hard way. Whenever you do something different from the norm, you have to over-communicate. It becomes exhausting and that’s why we’ve created processes because as human beings, we are going to forget to communicate. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journ

Recently Kevin got to interview Gabe McCoy, a co-founding member and co-managing partner from Pierce McCoy, a business law firm based in Norfolk, VA. In this episode, he talks about how important it is to build relationships in business. They’ve added lawyers that focus just on the needs of their client’s individual needs whether it be IP, employment, civil litigation, corporate structuring, etc. Geographically, they’ve scaled in some other sizable markets like New York, Texas, and Richmond. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast,

Early in Erik’s career when he was a young construction project manager, one of his managers told him to always pad his numbers. What he meant by that was that Erik should add cushion just in case something comes up. And Erik did that for several years until he went through the project management certification process and was taught that that is not the right way to do it. Rather than padding your numbers just because, you should take a few moments to think about what risks are ahead of you. Anticipate what could go wrong and then you can adjust your numbers based on what you think could go wrong. Instead of making something up without having a justifiable reason, think in this way: “So I purchased this $100 item but let’s say it doesn’t arrive on time. What effect could that have?” Now you have the rationale for why that $100 has increased. You’ve identified risks and mitigated it by adding more to your budget. Do this, and your numbers and estimates will be a lot cleaner and you will be on target much

Erik and Kevin are part of several Masterminds. These are groups of successful professionals that meet on a regular basis for the purpose of learning from each other. One of the Masterminds they are a part of is called Digital Agency Elite. It is run by their friend Jason Swenk. He alone brings a lot of value to the table, but the real magic is found in the group. It is made up of about 60 agency owners across the country. They meet on a regular basis to talk about issues they are facing and they help each other with advice and talking about their own experiences. There are several Masterminds out there. Erik is part of another one called Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), which is a worldwide organization. It is made up of entrepreneurs from different industries. Erik and Kevin find these different Masterminds to be invaluable and for that reason they will always be part of them. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital,

For many years, since Erik started his own agency before Array Digital, he started taking his staff out to lunch every 2 weeks. At the time, his staff didn’t have a really strong sense of team because of the staff augmentation style his business model had. For that reason, he invented company lunch. Since then, we’ve gone to company lunch every two weeks on a Thursday and had lunch on the company. But when COVID hit in March, we couldn’t get together and have lunch so we decided to do virtual company lunch. We would play games and have a theme, obviously bring your own food. It worked well especially for the employees who don’t normally get to participate in company lunch as now we have more employees who don’t work remotely than those that do. Then, about 2 months ago, we’ve been having company lunch but modifying it by eating outdoors. It’s a great time to let your guard down and have a good time with your coworkers regularly. It’s a great way to build the team up so think about taking your own company o

A vanity URL is essentially a simple and easy to remember website name. We are big fans of buying vanity URLs. You can get them on Google for about $12 a year, and that includes privacy. The reason you would get a vanity URL is for better marketing. For example, we have a webpage within our website that is geared toward marketing our services to lawyers. The full URL of that is something long that we don’t remember - something along the lines of www.thisisarray.com/maketing-for-lawyers. That's not really short or easy to remember when putting it on marketing materials. Instead, we purchased a vanity URL, www.arraylaw.com, that redirects the user to the webpage that’s intended for prospective law clients. That is much easier for others to remember and it's easier on the eyes. There is no limit on the amount of vanity URLs you can purchase and redirect to different pages on your website. At $12 a year through Google, it's a great buy and a smart marketing strategy. — Erik J. Olson is an award-

Erik recently attended a Mastermind workshop with other agency owners. One of the things that came up was whether to niche or not. This is something that Erik and Kevin have gone back and forth on since Array Digital’s inception three years ago. Chris Dreyer of Rankings.io was part of the Mastermind and he made a strong case for niching. Of course there are pros and cons to niching, but overall the pros outweigh the cons by far. Pros: Greater trust Sales conversion Higher fees Reduced competition Many more Cons: Smaller market More risk When the pandemic hit earlier this year we quickly learned that some industries fared better than others. We took inventory of which of our clients were doing well and which were not. It was then that we decided our niche should be medical, law and home service industries. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily po

Erik recently saw a message in one of the groups he’s part of where someone asked about simple web-based meeting agenda software recommendations. This person is focusing on a tool that can hopefully make running meetings easier and more effective but this tool would start to become a distraction. To run an effective meeting, you need the basic tools like an Internet connection but a tool is not going to make a meeting effective and communicate what you want to communicate in the meeting. Good communication, being apathetic about the topic at hand, having a structure to the meeting, and an open dialogue make a good meeting. A lot of the time, people focus on the tool but not on the actual communication. Focusing on the tool rather than thee communication is an escape from the real problem: people being afraid to speak up, being apathetic, and being disengaged. Just use a simple document to outline the things you want to cover in the meeting. Otherwise, you’re just going to have a rambling session which does

Have you ever had a hard time getting in front of your ideal prospects? Everyone wants more clients, leads, and prospects but the way that you find them is to figure out where they’re hanging out and then go there. Now that we have segmented our business we know who the people are that we want to get in front of, we can figure out where to go to find them. Think are there any events where your ideal client might gather? Find an event that caters only to their industry which puts you in a room with 100+ ideal prospects. It’s either going to be an in-person event (post-COVID), an online event, or where you advertise online. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, an

Whenever you have someone’s attention, you have an opportunity to cross-promote something else that you’re doing. For example, on this podcast, we have an outro where we cross-promote another initiative that we’re doing. Once you grab someone’s attention and provide them with value, then you have an opportunity to cross-promote something else you’re doing. It’s a powerful tactic similar to repurposing content. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups. — For more infor

We are now 7-8 months into this Coronavirus pandemic and the recession that has come along with it. Erik recently asked on Twitter if the Coronavirus recession has taught you any business lessons that you will keep for the rest of your career. For Erik, it reinforced a lot of the beliefs that he had going into the recession. Erik studied how to recession-proof your business around 2018 because a lot of people were predicting a recession in 2020. No one thought there was going to be a pandemic but they were right about the recession. The first lesson Erik has learned is that we don’t really need an office, at least not right now. We’ve been operating fine remotely. Offices will likely be a thing again in the future but we’re far out from that. Lesson learned: we can hire from anywhere in the US and we don’t need to get a bigger office. This office is more than enough. Several people responded to Erik on Twitter so make sure to listen to the episode to hear those too. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning

One thing that has helped our cash flow tremendously is the fact that we bill and get paid in advance. It took a long time to get to this point in our business but once we made the shift we noticed immediate benefits. Many service Industries bill in arrears, meaning they bill after work has been completed. Contractors will often take a deposit and payments after completing milestones, and their final bill will come sometime after all work is complete. Then, if they have payment terms of 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, or even 90, they often have to wait weeks, if not months, to get paid. Most of our clients are on auto-pay, meaning we draft their account or charge their credit card automatically every month. There are a few that pay us by check, but if they do our payment terms are seven days. Sometimes prospects will question that, but overall it works for us and helps us get paid faster. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, h

We love ACH! ACH Stands for Automated Clearing House. It’s essentially a transfer from one bank account to another. It is our preferred way for clients to pay us. We used to accept many forms of payments, but in the last two years we moved to ACH and we love it. We get paid faster, there is less admin work, and there are minimal fees. We use Quickbooks to set up ACH payments and bill clients. It’s a simple process that requires you to connect your bank account to Quickbooks one time. Then, when you want to get a client on ACH you ask for your client’s account information to make the transfers. QuickBooks does all the work by drafting the client’s bank account every month and sends them a sales receipt for their records. It’s a win-win. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

Every year Array Digital gives back to the community by providing a free website to a deserving nonprofit organization. This is the 4th year we’ve done it but this year, we are focusing on the medical industry. We have a lot of medical clients and it’s an area we really specialize in. There have been major shifts in the medical industry this year due to COVID-19. These healthcare heroes have helped society so much by putting themselves in harm’s way to care for people who are affected by this virus. This year, we’re only giving a website to medically related nonprofit organizations. If you are associated with a healthcare nonprofit organization, submit them at thisisarray.com/nonprofit. Applications close October 31st so please submit as soon as possible. We want to help you and hear your story. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organiz