Journey To $100 Million

Overtime, we change our prices, adjust our services, and add different services all based on the strategy that we’ve created for our individual clients. But when do we reprice an existing client? If a client is going to continue services with us and want to sign a new contract, we don’t reprice them. They keep the same pricing they had with a new scope of work even if we’ve updated our pricing strategy. If someone wants to remove a service, then we reprice it. Whatever the prices are for the services they already have minus the service they’re removing, that will be the new price. — 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.

We’re all in such a rush these days that sometimes we even force ourselves to press on through even when we have nothing left in us. Every once in a while, it’s ok to take a break. Recently, Erik took a break in his training for his half marathon. He was on a 1 hour and 45 minute run but found that 30 minutes in, he needed to take a break, walk, drink some Gatorade, etc. After about 2 minutes of walking, he started running again and felt so refreshed that he sped through the run. We experience this in business too. We’re so busy all the time and we run around exhausting ourselves. You need time to recharge sometimes physically, sometimes mentally, and sometimes both. — 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 star

Make the most of LinkedIn by setting daily tasks. Kevin does this because LinkedIn is challenging and you need to be working beyond your profile to grow your engagement, connections, followers, and potential for sales. #1: Anyone that accepts Kevin’s connection requests, he makes a task to send them a message. The message is basic and general, just a simple introduction that’s short and not salesy. #2: Once they respond back, Kevin sends a second message about the podcast. Now they know who you are, having connected with you, and learned more about your company. #3: Set a task everyday to connect with 10 people that you would be interested in getting to know. — 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 hi

Erik recently found himself needing to send out quite a bit of information to members of an organization he's a part of. He tried to think of the best way to do this. He could have sent one very long email, but he decided against that because he didn't want to bombard the readers with all that information at once. He then thought about sending a series of emails, but similarly, he didn't think they would want to be reading a lot of material on a daily basis. H decided instead to record short videos, about 1 to 2 minutes long, containing all the information they need. He then decided to add those videos to a drip campaign, which will send daily short emails, with the link to that day’s video. That will turn into a daily email with a short video, over the course of about 10 days. Those chunks of information via short videos is a lot more manageable than a bunch of information at once. Erik uses videos to get out information to the team regularly, and it's well received. Think of how you can incorp

There should be very very few exceptions to policies. If you take the time to create a policy it's because you saw the need to create it and therefore it should be followed 99% of the time. If a policy is only being followed sometimes it becomes a guideline, not a policy. If a policy is being questioned time and time again, by your team or your clients, then it's worth re-evaluating to see if it's valid. If it’s not, then it may need to change. But once again, if you have a policy in place it needs to be followed most of the time. Erik recently had a discussion with the sales team about a particular policy for a particular client. In this instance it actually made a lot of sense to Erik to make an exception to the policy. That's not always the case, but this particular time it just made sense. Think of the policies you have in place, if they are still valid, or if you need to make a change. Remember, policies should be the rule, not the exception. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital

Erik was recently asked on Twitter by TechnoTim, what the status was of writing his first book. If you've listened to the podcast earlier in the year you may have heard Erik talking about writing and publishing his first book. It was one of his New Year's resolutions for 2020. Erik started by writing between 1,000 to 3,000 words every morning in December of 2019. His plan was to write the first draft in a month, take about a week off, and then start editing after that. What ended up happening was he wrote the first draft, he put it aside for about 3 ½ months, and then he started editing it. He clearly needed more than a week off from it, and the quarantine from COVID was just the kickstart he needed to start editing. At this point he is done editing, he has interviewed professional book editors, and he hired someone to edit his book. He estimates his book will be completely edited by the end of 2020. After that he will have someone create the book cover, he will format it for use on Amazon,

What would you do if you found out one of your competitors was advertising using your brand on Google? We recently ran into this very issue. We did a search for our company name, Array Digital, and were very surprised to find our picture next to one of our competitor’s ads. This stirred up some conversation within our company about what we should do. Do we address it? Do we go to them and ask them what's going on? Erik decided to take to LinkedIn to pose the question: What would you do if you found your competitor advertising over your brand on Google? He then called out the company by name. A couple of people congratulated him because they said it meant they see Array Digital as competition. Either way, Erik is not too pleased. He thinks we should defend the brand at all costs and make sure we are the ones that show up when we search our name. — 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 $1

We are a pretty small company with a pretty simple org chart. We're growing, but as a team of 14 we're still pretty small and the way the company is structured is straightforward. At the top we have Erik and Kevin. Erik is the CEO and oversees all of operations. Kevin is the CMO and oversees the sales department. Below that we have Glen, who’s our Sales Manager, Jamal, who oversees the web design team, and Jake, who oversees SEO, social media and advertising. Each of them have a team who work under them in each of those services. Our goal is to become a $100M a year advertising agency, specializing in medical, law, and the home service industries. As we grow Kevin envisions our org chart changing to possibly having a team for each of those services, under each industry. That would mean that every industry would have a team that knows the ins and outs of that industry, and how to best serve it. As the company grows even more, we might even have teams for sub-sects of each of those industries.

We recently updated our mission statement to align with our new goals. Initially our mission statement was to dominate digital marketing in Hampton Roads. That served us well the last couple of years, but we feel we have outgrown it. Our new mission statement is to dominate digital marketing for our clients in the medical, law, and home service industries. That’s what we do the best in, and that's where our focus has moved to. A mission statement should align with the goals you want to achieve in the next two to five years. It should be achievable, measurable, and change as your goals change. Unlike a vision statement, which is really a long-term vision for the next 10 years, a mission statement is a shorter term goal. If you haven't created your mission statement, or if it no longer aligns with your goals, think about creating a new one. Make it meaningful to you. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the hos

When you're first starting out in business it's common to take on all kinds of work. If someone requests your services it's very tempting to not turn work away even if it's something that you don't do or you're not interested in doing. You'll figure out a way to get it done because you're trying to grow, you need money to pay the bills, and something seems better than nothing. Erik did this a lot in his early years. He agreed to work on projects that he was not interested in or he frankly didn't know too much about, because he needed the work and he needed the exposure. As he continued to grow though, he became more selective in the type of work he would take on, and chose to only do work that he specialized in. Erik sees entrepreneurialism as a path. Some are ahead of you on the path and some are behind. If someone requests services that you can't fulfill or don't want to, you have a choice. You can politely turn them down or you can refer to them to someone who may be behind you on the entre

What is better than one big piece of content? Micro content. When you create content for your company or brand there are numerous opportunities to turn that into lots of micro content. What we mean by micro content is taking content and chopping it up into several smaller pieces of content. For example, this podcast episode is being recorded on video and audio and it's about 4 minutes long. That can be kind of long for someone to listen to or watch, especially if they’re multi-tasking. And, while we want to put out the entire episode for our audience, it's just as important to create as much micro content from it as possible. In this case that could be taking a few of the most important points from the episode and making shorter videos, videos in different aspect ratios for Instagram or Facebook, or a still picture with word overlays. All of a sudden we have numerous pieces of micro content from this 4 minute episode. Creating content is time consuming, and editing it to put out to an audience

We have had to hire remotely over the last few months entirely on video. We interviewed Francesca, a new member of our sales team, a guy named James out of North Carolina and now we’ve got an offer out to another employee located in Miami, Florida. While most of our team is local, we’re almost at the halfway point where almost half of our team is remote. We want the best people with the best skills and we don’t really care where they are. We want to talk to everyone and we want to hire the best. — 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 podc

Something we’ve battled with for quite a while and never done is niche. We’ve been asked what we specialize in as far as industries are concerned and even though we specialize in some select services, there’s no industry that we focus on 100%. We’re always working with new clients and learning to adapt to their industry and it helps us stay on our toes and allows us to do something different. This has probably stunted our growth a bit. We’re not niching but we’ve picked three segments, determined who our best clients are and who we get the best results for. Those tended to be in home services, medical, and law. Now that means we can get very versed in those languages, communication, and understanding of each of those kinds of businesses. Our people talk the talk of that client. If you work in tons of different industries, you constantly have to be asking questions of the client about stuff like their business, how they operate, etc. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. T

When it comes to your business you should always think long-term. If you're a sole proprietor or you're just starting out it's easy to think you don't need to document processes because you might be the only one doing the work or there are just a few of you doing the work. But, if the goal is to one day scale the business it is important to start documenting processes early on. It might not be necessary in the beginning but it becomes a problem as new employees are hired and they don't know what the process is or who in the company knows how to do it. It also becomes necessary when you hire an expert in their field to try to help you grow. They should start documenting their processes early on so that it can be replicated in case they decide to leave the company one day or others are hired to help them. So always look to the future and what you need to help you scale efficiently. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is a

Erik recently hosted a #LunchtimeLive with Brian Butler who happens to be a high school friend of Erik who has made a name for himself as a mixed martial arts agent. Think Jerry McGuire but UFC. These LunchtimeLives dive into what different marketing techniques people have used that make them stand out in their industries and allowed them to gain some traction. We ask them what is their key to success in their industry. What Brian said really resonated with Erik because he has a background in graphic design. He said he needed to get into some sort of physical routine so he got into mixed martial arts and the owner asked him to put on an event. The result of the event was amazing because it was marketed in a different way than most mixed martial arts events so the martial artists started approaching him asking him to be their agent. So he brought his marketing expertise to the mixed martial arts world. He treated being an agent like being a marketer while most other agents acted as if they were lawyers. H

We are hiring right now specifically a web designer, a salesperson, and a few other roles in the near future. We recently did a round of founders interviews which basically means that the team has already vetted the candidate and then the person moves onto Erik and Kevin in the interview process. We first do a phone screening that takes about 15 minutes and if they pass that, they have an interview with the hiring manager who can then bring on other members of their team. Once they pass that step, there are about 3 remaining candidates that get moved on to the founders’ interview. By this point, the hiring manager has already confirmed that this person can do the job at hand. What Kevin and Erik are interviewing for is fit. Do they exhibit the core values that we hold? Last week Kevin and Erik had 5 interviews and it ended up being quite tiring. By the end of it, both Erik and Kevin felt like they hadn’t accomplished a lot. But what they did that day was interview the next person that might come onto the t

Exclusivity can win deals but it can also kill deals. Recently we were faced with being asked to sign an exclusivity deal with one of our current clients. An exclusivity deal means you will not work for one of your client's competitors. It can be a specific competitor by name, or it can be competitors within a geographic region. The general idea is that you will not help their competitors get ahead while you are working for them. The advantage of the exclusivity deal is that it is meant to create a strong bond between you and your client. They essentially promise to work with you for a long time and be a great client, while you help them get more business. The downside is it can kill future deals for you, especially if one of their competitors wants to work with you, and that deal seems bigger. One thing you can do in that case is to reaffirm your commitment with them. It doesn’t hurt to let your current client know that you've been approached by one of their competitors and reassure them of y

Every Friday we host a livestream on Facebook and stream it on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube. Recently we had the pleasure of hosting Katherine Prescott on our livestream. She is the founder of voicebrew.com, which is a website that sends out regular updates on new features of Amazon Echo and Alexa. Erik learned a couple of very valuable things from Katherine. The first is that your advertising, whether it's traditional ads, digital ads, or even your website, needs to have at least one very clear call to action (CTA). A call to action is something you want the consumer to do upon viewing your ad or visiting your site. It could be to call you, sign up for a newsletter, or fill out a contact form. The point is the CTA needs to be clear and effective. Erik was surprised to see Katherine has one CTA on her website and that’s to sign up for her newsletter. In fact, that is the only major thing on her homepage, which he thinks is pretty clever. The other thing he learned was she has one of those pop-ups on

We are now into month four of the COVID pandemic. Many people didn't really believe we would still be dealing with this four months later, Erik included. But here we are, still working from home, with no end in sight. Before this pandemic it was easy to imagine that working from home might be like a vacation. But, Erik soon realized this was not the case. Even though he actually really likes working from home, he finds himself working a lot more these days. As he records this episode for instance, it is 6:30 p.m. and he still has a lot of work to do. He has spent most of the day on calls or in video meetings and hasn't gotten to many tasks. He also has a stack of mail that he hasn't opened yet. How has working from home been for you? Do you find yourself working more or less? Let Erik know how it's been going for you. You can reach him on Twitter at @iamerikjolson. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also t

Every so often we find we have to update our marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to events we put on. An example is the monthly marketers meeting we used to host called Marketers Anonymous. This was a marketers networking event we used to host during lunch at a bar and grill in Norfolk, Virginia. It started off as us speaking at the events every month. Then it changed to us inviting speakers (mainly other marketers) to speak to our guests. At some point we realized we weren’t getting any business out of these so we had a meeting to discuss how we could get more out of it. That’s when we decided to start inviting speakers whose message could help get us in front of our ideal prospects. It was a win-win. Unfortunately COVID hit and we had to cancel our monthly in-person meetings. We turned our attention to our Lunchtime Livestream, which is a livestream we put on once a week on Fridays. We went through a similar learning process. We started off speaking on our livestreams ourselves, then w