Journey To $100 Million

We have a Lunchtime Live that we’ve been doing every Friday at noon. As part of notifying people that we are going live, we have repurposed our text messaging platform to let people know about the lives that are happening and where they can access it. Erik is a big proponent of repurposing information but there is a danger to it. We learned this a few weeks ago when we repurposed our Marketers Anonymous text messaging platform for these livestreams. — 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 Anonym

At some point, someone is going to ask you for exclusivity. What that means is they don’t want you to take on work for a similar client. We’ve been asked this multiple times over the years and basically we sign a clause that says we won’t work with their competitors depending on a certain scope which varies from request to request. Erik learned early on that exclusivity can really hurt your company. — 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 t

Erik was recently asked a question by Ski on LinkedIn. Ski is a personal friend and fellow business owner. The question was about cash flow and what it means to be successful in terms of cash. This was Erik’s response: Revenue is essentially a vanity metric. A better picture of a company’s wealth is cash flow. Cash flow is the money that moves in and out of a company from sales and expenses. It's actual cash in the bank. One way we maximize cash flow is having tight payment terms. Many companies allow you to pay them in 15 or 30 days but our payment terms are Net7. Our preferred payment method is ACH or credit card. Payment by check is a last resort and if we extend that option payment is due within seven days. We also invoice before services are rendered so we are getting paid as we start the work, instead of paying for labor and other costs and then reimbursing ourselves weeks later. These two things alone have maximized our cash flow significantly. Another way to maximize cash flow is by

Creating and following processes is a very important part of our business. Years ago, when Erik worked as a contractor for the military he learned the importance in having formal processes. At the time he was working as a project manager for software development projects, some of which had no written processes. This created problems as implementing the software would take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days, because only one person knew how to do it, and that person was doing it from memory. Relying on just one person to set things up from memory is never a great idea. Because of Erik’s experience we now have several processes at Array Digital. We have a process for selling, for recruiting, for onboarding, off-boarding, and everything in between. Having processes ensures nothing is forgotten, nothing is left out, and the whole thing is repeatable by anyone who reads the process document. Creating the process documents can be as simple as sitting down next to the person who knows the proce

Ever since quarantine began we decided to provide more consistent content to our listeners. We can now say that every Friday at noon ET, we will be hosting Lunchtime Live. We have also decided to include guests in our podcasts occasionally to provide a wider range of thoughts and ideas for our listeners. These streams can be found on Youtube Live, Twitter Live, Twitch, and Facebook Live. We recommend posting questions on Facebook and reviewing questions from others, as there is valuable information readily available at your fingertips. To be notified before a Lunchtime Live, go to thisisarray.live and enter your phone number or follow thisisarray on Facebook. — 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 fi

Kevin talks about a few examples of getting comfortable and why it’s a bad idea. COVID-19 is a perfect example. It’s come around and wreaked havoc on the economy; it’s something no one could have expected or predicted. You can try to plan for the market going down but this is something completely different. If you don’t adapt and adapt fast, you’re probably going to have a tough time or you’re going to go out of business. Your company has to be agile enough and be used to change.  If you’re a company that’s been around doing the exact same thing for 25 years, you will have a much harder time adjusting than a company that is constantly pivoting and innovating.  — 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 f

Erik was recently asked by our social media specialist, Shannon, how people are staying motivated during quarantine. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ve been able to quarantine at home and not work out in the public during a dangerous time. Here is how Erik has been staying motivated during quarantine: He has created an at-home office with all the right equipment. He’s continued to keep a schedule, still waking up at 5 AM, reading the paper, working on his book, working out, etc. Routines can become mundane but they help to keep motivated. — 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 Journe

You need to work to build a resilient brand. A lot of things go into this including time and patience but some of the things you should look at are your brand promise and brand experience.  You also really need to have the right clientele. Think about what COVID-19 has done to businesses and brands and think about who stands out and has continued to carry on during this time. It’s the brands who are still doing what they’ve always promised they would.  At Array Digital, we’ve continued to grow and believe it’s largely to do with our promises and who we are as a brand: what people think of when they think about our company. If your company gets hit hard and you start to let things slip, you probably won’t keep the clients that you had before. They may be looking for companies that are more stable and resilient. — 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,

Erik is considering getting himself a shedquarters. A shedquarters is a custom office space created in a shed. He got the idea from his good friend Kevin Griffin. Kevin has worked from home for years and he wanted a dedicated office space that wasn't necessarily in the home. He created his shedquarters by building out a shed in his backyard. Erik followed Kevin’s progress as he built his office space and was rather impressed. He is seriously considering taking his existing backyard shed and building one out for himself. One of the benefits of a shedquarters is being able to work remotely without all the distractions that come from working at home. Erik finds that very appealing as he records these podcast episodes at home and sometimes it can get a little noisy in the background. It would also give him the privacy he needs while still being close to home. The other major benefit is the cost savings. A shedquarters would cost a fraction of what it costs to maintain an office space. Erik doesn't believe we

Today, Kevin shares how he uses LinkedIn, where his success has been, and where he’s taking it. He’s been putting his attention into it for about a year now and since created a strategy. He posts once a day during the week following what he calls a “social theme” just for his LinkedIn. He’s created different categories that make it easier to think of content and keeps templates in Adobe for each one so that he can see all of them in one place. He shares motivation, trends/data, team whether it be a new team member or a current one who’s doing something new or different, wins, and events. — 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 Di

Kevin recently came up with a few simple steps to starting your own podcast. This doesn't go into the details of marketing it, but it does give a few pointers for getting it up and running. Here are the five simple steps you should take: 1. Pick your style of podcast - Solo, multiple people, roundtable discussion 2. Choose the length of your podcast - 5-10 mins (good for daily broadcasting) - 30-60 mins (good for weekly episodes) - 60-90 min (best for monthly podcasts) 3. Choose your equipment - It doesn’t have to be fancy. Start with your phone or laptop. 4. Choose your software - You’ll need recording software and publishing software 5. Just launch it - Publish your episode, get feedback, then improve A lot of people will overthink this and will want to get everything perfect before starting. But the most important thing to remember is to just do it. Get used to the sound of your voice being recorded, publish your first couple of episodes, get feedback from others and then get better. — Er

We took a hit with the pandemic and we lost a lot of revenue but we kept on selling and our revenue is now higher than it was before the pandemic. We are still growing and it's to the point where we need to grow the team. We have been wanting to bring on another salesperson and now the time is right. Erik and Kevin have been working the last couple of years on developing a sales process and improving it. We hired our first salesperson, Glen, a year ago, and things have been going great. A year later we are finally ready to hire our second salesperson, and we did. We just brought on Francesca in May. She has been busy training with Glen and Kevin. She has been picking up on things quickly and Kevin has no doubt she is going to kill it in sales, helping us grow even more. — 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 Marke

It's important to align your brand experience with your brand promise. A lot of companies promise a lot of things with the messaging they put out on their website, social media, or printed materials. Sometimes they don't even know what those are. It's really important you not only know what your brand promises are but to uphold them. That will help you become a more resilient company and a company others can trust. At Array Digital our brand promise is all-inclusive pricing and constant communication. We have worked to make billing as predictable as possible by offering all-inclusive pricing and bundled services. We also stay in constant contact with our clients with check-ins, monthly calls, and following up when we say we will. It’s important to us that we do what we say we’re going to do. — 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 o

We were recently reminded of the days we used to bill by the hour. It’s pretty standard for service providers, but in our opinion there is a much better way. It took years to make the graduation from billing by the hour to billing by the project. Then it took a few more years to go from billing by the project to a set monthly amount for ongoing services. Erik refers to it as a graduation because it was a graduation of sorts. Billing by the hour was time consuming and irregular. Sometimes clients would get upset if an invoice was significantly larger than previous invoices because we billed more hours that period. Project billing was a bit better, but it had disadvantages too. Trying to calculate how much a project would cost could be time-consuming and once you gave the client that estimate it was sometimes hard to justify any overages. It was about two years ago that we decided to move to monthly recurring revenue and we're glad we did. Clients like knowing how much they’re going to pay every mo

Our pricing and structure has been developed to service larger clients than we’ve been previously used to. But in our evolution, we’ve slowly moved up and set the bar higher. We’ve hired more people, we’ve put more energy into our services, communication, and customer service. So it’s harder for us to work with a super small client, therefore, our pricing is not really structured for those. From our sales side, we’ll get these small clients who would require us to lower our threshold and prices to accommodate their small budget. But we need to start saying no to those clients, clients who don’t make sense for our company. — 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 i

Erik recently posted on LinkedIn asking for questions he can talk about on the podcast. Here’s a question from Kate Johnson, “How can we instill a spirit of hustle and entrepreneurship in young kids?” Thank you, Kate, for the question. The first time Erik made his own money was in 7th grade. His mom sent him out to shovel snow and he started doing it for his neighbors too. The next year, he cut grass. It was easy to get work and recurring revenue. — 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 Anonymou

It has been over two months since Array Digital started working 100% from home. Like many other companies we have taken all of our operations remote. This was a big change for Kevin who had committed to working in an office setting at least five years ago. He's had no home office or any real dedicated space for work from home. After a couple of weeks of remote work though he saw the need to create a space. So he created a little area in his den for his home office. With each passing week he has done something to make the space more productive. One weekend he actually built himself a desk. Another day he went to the office to pick up his large monitor. He has added a few pieces of equipment and he continues to make improvements to his new home office. The truth is no one knows when things will get back to normal or when we'll be able to get back to the office. So we're making the most of our temporary offices at home. It's possible we’ll go back in a couple of months or even keep working from home perm

As business owners, this isn’t a great time to be in business for most people. Now there are exceptions of course but most businesses are really impacted by COVID-19 and the shutdown of the economy for the last 3 months. Businesses in retail, travel, transportation, events, and restaurants have been driven to bankruptcy. Erik had been reading that a lot of these businesses were already on the brink of bankruptcy for years before COVID hit. The businesses that were in bad shape before going in are probably not going to exit at all or will exit in bad shape. Here’s the bottom line: if you can survive this, then you got it and you will flourish. Keep your head up and think about the positives. Think about what you can do differently when you reopen. Do what you need to do to survive then take advantage of the opportunity that will come afterward. — 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 Milli

We've talked about Profit First before, but it's worth bringing up again. Profit First is a book by Mike Michalowicz. The teaching in the book is a unique system to manage business finances. Essentially all money that flows into the company as revenue goes into one account called Income. From there the money is dispersed twice a month to various other accounts that have been set up for different purposes. For instance we have an account called License and Insurance. The money that gets dispersed to this account is saved up all year to pay for the business license tax bill and liability insurance bill that we get every year around March. Another important account is the Operating Expenses account. This is where most of our monthly operating expenses are paid from. We also have separate accounts for Profit, Owner’s Tax, and a few others. The idea is to pay yourself a certain percentage of profit with each disbursement and the rest goes to the other accounts based on set percentages too. The money i

In Erik’s career, there has been a couple of times when he’s put good money into newspaper advertising and it yielded nothing. The first time was when he was helping his wife with her cake bakery. They would offer coupons and he would see those coupons coming back so it seemed that people were actually reading it. Then he decided to spend $250 for an ad in the Sunday newspaper and NO ONE brought the ad in to redeem their free cupcake. It was a complete waste of money. Erik then did it again with his software business 80/20 and ran color ads that were about $800 each for about a year, spending about $10,000 in total. He had one person say to him that he saw his ad but that was the extent of his ROI on running newspaper ads. He did learn that newspaper advertising doesn’t lead to much more than brand awareness. — 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