Journey To $100 Million

Erik was recently talking to a good friend of his over the phone. This friend works at a big company. A hospital to be more precise. His friend was telling him how he was trying to get time off from work to attend a conference. The friend’s boss did not approve the request stating things were too busy at work. Erik asked his friend how he put in the request for time off. The friend replied he had emailed his boss to ask for the time. Erik followed up his question by asking how he had put in the formal request, and his friend replied the email was the formal request. This really surprised Erik. He was shocked to learn that a large corporation such as a hospital would have such an informal process. Here at Array Digital we have a much more formal process in place for requesting time off. If an employee wants to take some time they are to fill out the time-off request form. That form gets sent to their direct supervisor, who then approves the time. The approval gets put into our online task manager, whic

We have a special guest host for today's episode. His name is Jeff Kinsey but he goes by Ski or The Ski Man. Erik first met Ski in January 2019 at a conference called AlexaConf. He has done some consulting for Array Digital and he really knows his stuff. Ski starts the episode by saying he is on his second Kia. He bought it used, as a returned lease, and as he was test-driving it he noticed there was no CD player. The saleslady told him it wasn't needed anymore because everyone just streams their music. He was taken aback. The saleslady was right and he should have known this. He's been in technology all his life. He also noticed he didn’t hear the beep to let him know to turn off the lights as he exited the car. The saleslady told him he didn’t need to - the Kia would turn them off for him. This is what Ski calls the Kia mindset - thinking so far ahead of the curve it makes others want to know more. The beeping older cars used to make to remind you the lights were on seemed to make sense but it really

On Twitter Erik gets asked a lot about venture capital. It seems to be an excuse for many would-be entrepreneurs to not start their business. There are a lot of reasons or excuses to not start a business but if you really want to have one you have to find your way around them. A lack of funds seems to be the number one reason why people don't get started. But Erik believes it’s not always needed in the beginning. When Erik hears this reason from an aspiring entrepreneur he will publicly or privately message them and ask them if they have even tried selling their product or service. Often times the answer is no. The process of selling your product or service is known as validating your business idea. Erik believes that in the beginning this is more important than coming up with the funds to start your business. He suggests buying cheap or used materials and equipment to get yourself started. Next, begin selling your minimum viable product. Then, sell it again. Repeat that process over and over, improving yo

Kevin recently stumbled across one of those flip magazines on the Internet that had really valuable data, in particular a long list of contact information for an association whose members we would love to get in front of. Each listing had the company and a person of contact with their email address and phone number. The problem was that it wasn’t in a format that is downloadable. We wanted to get the email addresses of all of the people in there and then target them on Facebook and talk directly to them. What that meant was that we needed the data but there were 73 pages with 30-40 different contacts on each page; there was a ton of information. Erik ended up going to Upwork.com, a website where you can put out a project you need done and freelancers will bid on it. He offered to pay $50 for this data entry project which was an absolute score for the value of this data. Think about some of the things that you really want to do but don’t have the time to do it. See if you can outsource it to a freelancer. I

Today’s guest host is Michael King, CEO of KFE Solutions and fellow podcaster of the show called In the Trenches. Michael is often asked what the number one mistake is that business owners make when it comes to their finances. That's a pretty easy question for Michael to answer. He believes the biggest mistake made from the newest of entrepreneurs to CEOs of large corporations is not knowing the four most important metrics of their business. They are: revenue, gross profit, net profit, and cash. Revenue is the total of your sales from your product or service. Most everyone knows and tracks revenue. Next is gross profit. An example is if you sold coffee cups for $1, and you bought those cups for $0.20 from your supplier. Your gross profit would be $0.80. Net profit is then your gross profit (in this case $0.80), minus overhead costs (say that is $0.30 per cup). That leaves you with a net profit of $0.50 per cup sold. These are all important numbers to know but at the end of the day the most important number

In this episode Erik talks about a book he just finished listening to called Never Split the Difference. It was written by Chris Voss, a retired FBI hostage negotiator. Erik has been listening to more audiobooks as he has been working out a lot. He likes exercising and learning something new at the same time. There were two main takeaways from this particular book: First, when negotiating a deal with someone, and they are asking for more than you are willing to give, let them know the problem they are causing for you and ask them how to solve it. An example would be you are trying to sell someone a website for $10,000. They want you to do it for $5,000. Instead of going back and forth ask them, “How do you expect me to do that? How do you expect me to be able to pay my people”, etc.? This puts the problem solving in their lap. They may offer suggestions but you keep asking them how you can do that. The second takeaway is when someone asks you to do something you repeat back the last couple of words they s

In December 2019 Erik started dedicating two hours every morning to write his first book. At the time of recording this podcast episode it is now mid January 2020. Erik has been writing pretty consistently and is up to about 75,000 words in his book. He has a few more sections left to write. The goal is to have the finished book be about 50,000 words so in the end he will have to trim down the book considerably and leave only the best 50,000 words. Once he is done writing he will edit it himself once or twice, trim down on the wording, and then send it to an editor. He anticipates having the book complete by the Summer or Fall of 2020. The purpose of the book is to chronicle the journey of getting his business to $1 million a year in revenue. This is a major milestone as statistics show that 96% of businesses never make it to $1 million of annual revenue. Not only is $1 million a cool sounding number, but it is statistically very hard for businesses to achieve. Erik wants to help other entrepreneurs by t

We are in a new year now and that got Erik thinking about New Year's resolutions. He was recently talking to people about his 2019 resolutions and what he would be doing in 2020. When asking others about their New Year's resolutions he noticed often times they responded jokingly. It was almost as if they didn't believe what they were saying at that moment. Erik doesn't really understand why people lie to themselves when it comes to New Year's resolutions. He doesn't understand why someone would make a resolution to improve some aspect of their life and not mean it. It's one thing to lie to someone else but why lie to yourself? He doesn't understand why someone would go through the ritual every year of making resolutions they don’t really intend to keep. Do you lie to yourself about New Year's resolutions? If so, let Erik know why so he can understand. You can find him on Twitter at @iamerikjolson — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digi

Today we have a guest speaker, Tatsuya Nakagawa (aka Tats). Between 2006 and 2008, Tats and his business partner wrote a book about creating strategies to become successful on new product innovations. They got a testimonial from the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, the perfect person for the testimonial. But Tats felt he messed up by not promoting the book enough and missed an opportunity to help his business grow and increase his contacts. Why? Because he’s always been fairly shy and introverted. He’s always found different ways to accomplish his marketing goals but this time it didn’t work for him. Entrepreneurship is about your ability to fail publicly but to move forward with continued enthusiasm for what you’re doing. When you first start a company, no one knows who you are until you start growing, getting more media coverage, and hiring more and more employees. If you don’t like that, you’ll naturally do things that counteract that and it’s going to become a problem. Since then, Tats has worked

A good part of our monthly revenue comes from client ads spend. This is client money that we use to buy ads on Google and Facebook. In the past we used a debit card to make these media purchases. The debit card was linked to the checking account where all the client ad spend sits. One day we met with our American Express representative to talk about things. We have had an American Express credit card that we use to pay for things we need for the company. Our representative asked if we use the credit card for our client ad spend. Erik told her we didn't. She asked him why not. He replied that it wasn't really our money to spend so he felt more comfortable paying for the ads directly with a debit card then getting a big bill and paying it later. He asked the representative what the benefit would be to use a credit card and she pointed out a kind of obvious fact - that we would accumulate points that could be used for travel. Since that conversation we now have another American Express card that we use solel

Here at Array Digital we love the automation tool we use called Zapier. We use it for everything. Recently however, Erik discovered a new program that might be better than Zapier and is way more powerful. It's called Integromat. He found out about this program when he was looking for a program that would send a daily email to our new clients letting them know where we were in the onboarding process. It would require taking information from our daily task manager, Asana, and putting it into a customized email sent through Gmail. He was not able to find a way to accomplish this in Zapier so he started to look elsewhere. Erik knew this would require some sort of custom software, but having a long background in software development himself, he knew he didn't want to pay custom software prices. So he went on Upwork.com to look for a freelancer that could help. He found a programmer in LA that was up for the challenge. He was able to accomplish the task within a couple of days and only charged a few hundred dolla

Today's guest host is Whitney Duenas, fellow podcaster of Bold Hustle Podcast and owner of Barre by the Bay. Barre By the Bay is a boutique fitness studio in Virginia. One of the first things that came up in opening the studio was figuring out whether to make the instructors employees or independent contractors. This is something that Whitney discussed with her business lawyer. They went over some questions and the pros and cons of each. Whitney realized one the benefits of being an independent contractor is a higher earning potential as it is easier to earn more if they have the ability to work at various studios. Another advantage is they have the freedom to create their own curriculums, procedures and uniforms. Another benefit is working in a smaller studio with smaller class sizes, and more individualized attention. One of the cons is financial instability as the instructors don't have a set paycheck. Other cons are having more responsibilities over filing their own taxes and not always having subb

Today's episode is a shout-out to our podcast listener Craig Dewart. Erik connected with Craig on Twitter through direct messages. As a result of those messages Craig was introduced to this podcast. Craig offered to leave a review for the podcast. Erik sent him the link to Amazon to leave the review, and that's when he found out that Craig is in the UK. (This podcast is heard all over the world, in English-speaking countries). Craig had to use the UK's version of Amazon in order to leave the review. In any case, Erik was very grateful to Craig and wanted to give him a shout out. We get a lot of feedback on the podcast but not a ton of reviews. When someone takes the time out of their day to leave a great review we really appreciate it. It validates what we're doing and all the hard work that goes into it. So thank you Craig. We appreciate you. You can find Craig on Twitter at @craigd0412. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital,

Two years ago we started a holiday stand down period. What this means is that operations continue as usual, but the team does it all from home. We had noticed that business slows down considerably between Christmas and New Year's, and likewise the need for customer service slows way down. So, starting a couple of years ago we decided to let employees work the week between Christmas and New Year's from home. We still have our morning huddle every morning and standing meetings still take place, but they're all done over Google Hangout Meets. This last holiday season we did the stand down for the last two weeks of the year. We noticed that business actually starts to slow down three to four days before Christmas so we figured we'd extend it. It worked out pretty well. Everyone still got their work done and they did it from home. If you're in the business to business service industry, Erik recommends giving it a shot. You may find that the work will still get done, while giving everyone a chance to spend

Speaking events are important because they help to grow your business. It’s getting your name out there in front of prospects or people who may know someone who could benefit from your services. It generates new relationships and paints you as the expert in your industry. Kevin has a goal this year to book 10 speaking events outside of Array’s own events. As of January, he has 2 speaking engagements already booked. One way he’s passively looking for speaking engagements is with his LinkedIn banner that says he is open for speaking events with a bulleted list of topics he can speak on. Once you put yourself out there, people will come to you asking if you’re interested. There’s also tons of smaller groups that need speakers. Start with these small groups so that you can get some practice then start going for bigger groups. — 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 d

Erik recently put together an eBook titled Digital Marketing Trends for 2020 because digital marketing changes on basically a daily basis. Typically that happens on social media or in search and it can be overwhelming how fast and frequently the environment is changing. It’s practically a full-time job to keep track of the changes. Business owners don’t have time to be tracking what’s happening in digital marketing which is why you would hire an agency like us. So we’ve pared it down to the top 5 and here they are: Messaging: You get onto an app like Facebook Messenger. Some websites have messenger bots and you will see more companies doing that. You are also going to see more and more companies going live which has been extremely simplified with all the platforms that offer the live feature. Ephemeral content: This was introduced by Snapchat with their Stories feature. If you want to hear about the rest of the trends, you can go to thisisarray.com/trends to download the eBook.

If you’re an entrepreneur and are the face of your business, you - as the business leader - need to be doing video. It should be part of your plan and your social media because you need to be getting your face out there. One of Kevin’s goals is to sit down interview-style with 12 people who are making moves in their industry to get lessons and learn things but at the same time, creating content. You can also do live streams; most social media platforms offer this option. Every Friday during lunchtime, we do a live stream with different members of our team. We have a topic related to our industry and answer questions. — 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

Something we've found a little challenging is how to increase rates for our older clients. New customers don't really have an issue with our current rates and value proposition, but we have several clients that have been with us for years who pay lower rates. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to this: standardized pricing for everyone across the board or grandfather in older clients with lower rates. We have chosen to grandfather in older clients, and there are a couple of benefits to doing so. One, it rewards loyalty for those who have been with us for awhile. Two, we avoid issues that might come up from moving to higher rates. This matters because in some cases we have raised rates substantially to coincide with the value proposition we now offer. What we do instead is implement minor yearly increases to those who have been with us for at least 12 months. Our minimum commitment terms are 12 months so we look at anyone who has fulfilled their minimum commitment and assess a slight inc

In this episode Kevin talks about the side hustle he had during high school. Kevin grew up in Chincoteague. It's a small island town on the coast of Virginia. The town is known for fishing, boating, and seafood.  Kevin came up with the idea of catching and selling minnows. Minnows are tiny fish that are great bait for bigger fish. Growing up in the town that he did he saw the need for minnows in fishermen and boat captains. So, in the mornings before school he would create the traps for the minnows and throw them into the ocean.  After school he would go back to check the traps that were full of the tiny minnows. He would then take these buckets of minnows and sell them to the fisherman and boat captains. Sometimes he would make up to $50. Kevin had a part-time job in high school but this was his side hustle that earned him some extra spending cash. The point here is that there is always something extra you can do for money. If you have a business or are starting a side gig, decide where there is a need. S

Back in the day, when Erik first started his business, he worked as a freelancer. He kept his day job and worked on his business on nights and weekends. This meant he was working long hours almost seven days a week. As his business grew, and he got to the point where he was ready to hire help, he started by hiring a couple of freelancers, since that’s what he was familiar with. By this point his business had become his day job and he was now working typical business hours during the day. Just like he had done in the past as a freelancer, many of these freelancers were only working nights and weekends. The problem with that is that Erik was now working hard during the day and was often needed to help direct the freelancers during their working hours on nights and weekends. It was pretty exhausting. Erik quickly realized that hiring freelancers was not the answer for him. He decided instead to start hiring consultants who worked full-time during normal business hours. It was worth the extra money to work