Synopsis
Follow along as we take our digital marketing agency from $1M in sales in 2018 to $100M by 2030. Hosted by Erik Olson and Kevin Daisey, Founders of Array Digital, our podcast will chronicle the ups and downs, the wins and loses, and the tools and strategies employed along the journey to becoming a dominant player in the ever changing digital marketing industry.
Episodes
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Do I Need a Lawyer to Start a Business?
30/01/2020 Duration: 04minErik was recently asked, “do I need a lawyer to start a business?” It’s a good question because there’s a lot of questions when starting a business that go into the legality of what type of entity you’re trying to form whether that be an LLC, a sole proprietorship, etc. Erik recommends deferring all of that and not letting that tie you up. Granted, lawyers are very good when you need them but in the very beginning, you should not get a lawyer. Your focus should be on finding customers that are willing to pay for your product or service offering. Don’t worry about the legal aspects until you make money and validate your idea; once you start really selling, then you can think about things like what kind of business entity to form and what kind of contract you should have in place. — 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 Market
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11 Tips to Own The Space in Your Market
29/01/2020 Duration: 04minYou want and need to be the company that people first think about when they hear something from your industry or about the product or service that you offer. Here are some tips and tactics we’ve used here at Array Digital to make that happen: 1. Create a bold mission statement. 2. Have an even bolder vision statement. 3. Think about doing a nonprofit giveaway. 4. Apply for awards. 5. Think about getting key board positions in your industry. 6. Start a podcast or flash briefing to talk about your industry or area of expertise. 7. Book speaking events - as many as you can. 8. Start a meetup. 9. Expand and talk about expansion. 10. Get into video and heavy on social media. 11. Use perception to your advantage. — 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 d
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Accidentally Calling Someone I Fired 2 Years Ago
28/01/2020 Duration: 04minRecently, Erik went to call a client from his car and he was using a voice prompt to do this. The client’s name is very similar to that of an employee who Erik had fired 2 years ago. So, of course, he ended up calling this person and Erik realized it as soon as the guy answered the phone. Instinctively, Erik wanted to just hang up but the guy probably had caller ID and would know it was him. It turns out that when Erik fired him, there were a lot of things going on in the guy’s personal life that escalated and affected his capability to do his job. It was a really bad time in his life but it was really affecting his work here. So right off the bat, Erik admitted what had happened but then said, “Hey, we haven’t talked in a while, how are you doing?” It turned out to be a very nice conversation and the former employee actually ended up thanking Erik for letting him go because the personal thing he was going through was not allowing him to perform to the best of his ability in a business environment. —
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Using Virtual Assistants
27/01/2020 Duration: 03minHave you ever thought of using a virtual assistant for some of your everyday tasks? If not, you should consider using them for one-off tasks or tasks that your team is too experienced for. Take a look at the daily tasks you have and ask yourself if there are any that could be performed by a virtual assistant. Next, ask your team if there are any tasks that they do that they feel isn’t the best use of their time. Compile a list of all these tasks and find out how many hours it takes to complete them. Then look for a virtual assistant online to help complete some of these. It will be a relief to you, and your team will be able to focus on the bigger stuff. You can look for virtual assistants overseas in places like the Philippines, India, or Indonesia. The money that you pay them is good money for them and it helps them. You can also look for virtual assistants on places like Fiverr or upwork.com. Keep your core services for yourself and your team to work on, but see what everyday tasks you could hire out.
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Don't Let Anyone Block Your Work
26/01/2020 Duration: 04minHow many times has a client or customer hired you to do something but you’re actually dependent on them to get your work done? This happens all the time at Array, especially with new clients because at the beginning of a contract, we need access to many of their accounts and need them to approve our creative strategies. Sometimes if we don’t get it, we will be blocked and have to just keep reminding the client that we can’t do what they’re paying to do. Now, beyond that point in the project, we often block ourselves because we ask for their feedback and when we don’t immediately get it, we forget about the task until it becomes late. One of our core values is urgency so worst case, we want to get it to them on time. The best course of action is to go about your work, assuming that what you’re doing is what they want (they hired you for that reason, right?) but allow them to make changes if they want to, giving them a deadline by which to do so. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer &
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Hold An Event and Claim Your Spot in The Market
25/01/2020 Duration: 03minThink about the State of the Union address or Economic updates that banks and economists hold. We’re doing the same concept but we’re going to tell the local market about what’s going to be trending in digital marketing this year. This allows us to own this space and say that we are experts in digital marketing. Our event is going to hold between 150-200 people, we’re getting sponsors, we’re selling tickets but that’s not what matters to us. We want to position ourselves as experts, get in front of prospects, and help the marketers and business owners in our local community. We’ve already got sponsors locked in, we’ve sold a lot of tickets, so we’re really excited about the event! Take a look at your industry and see if there’s existing events like this. If not, claim it yourself. — 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 Mar
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How to Improve Your Customer Experience in Retail
24/01/2020 Duration: 05minErik’s wife, Lia, recently had a horrible shopping experience at JoAnn Fabrics and wanted to share all the things that go wrong so that you can avoid making these mistakes at your own retail establishments. So, Lia went in knowing exactly what she wanted to buy, coupons in hand knowing exactly how much she would end up paying. She presented the coupon to the cashier and the point of sales (POS) system was not set up to take off the discount automatically meaning the sales clerk would have to manually calculate the discount. That’s lesson learned #1: the POS system should be configured so that the cashier doesn’t have to do it on her own. If you have a POS system, make sure that the calculations are done for you. Now, the cashier originally gave Lia 50% off even though the coupon was for 65%. Lia pointed out that this was incorrect and the cashier recalculated it 2 or 3 times before getting so frustrated that she rolled her eyes at Lia. That’s a big no-no. Lesson learned #2: If you have a discount coupon, ma
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Revenue or Profit: Which is More Important?
23/01/2020 Duration: 05minToday, we’re talking about money. Which is more important to you: revenue or profit? Has it changed over time? In the beginning, when Erik was just getting started with freelancing, it was revenue. He just needed legitimate work so he could build up his portfolio. Once he was able to do that, he was able to parlay that into bigger clients with bigger budgets. Once he became a full-time employee of this freelancing gig (when he quit his day job), it was still about revenue. That all changed, though, when he hired an employee because he was paying her from the revenue and the profit went to paying himself. That focus persisted as he hired more and more employees. Fast forward several years, Erik and Kevin merged and they’ve been growing ever since. They made a strategic decision in early 2019 to grow exponentially and that meant hiring an entire team. That meant profit decreased to almost 0 and in some months, it went negative. Since that time, however, they’ve gained many more clients and are back to maki
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Knowing When a Prospect Is Not a Fit
22/01/2020 Duration: 04minOne of the things Erik focuses on in the sales process is validating if the prospect is a good fit for the company. In periods of time where there are a lot of potential clients and sales activity, it’s especially important to do this because you have to figure out who you’d work with best and let the others go. There are a couple tell-tale signs that tell us that they aren’t going to be a good fit for us. One of these signs is whenever someone emails us and asks “What’s the cheapest plan you offer?” This tells us a lot about that person and the biggest is that they don’t really value the service that we can provide them and they don’t have the funds to afford an agency like us. At that point, Erik will try to find an alternative for whatever they need that may work better for their current needs. Another sign is when someone contacts us and we reach back out and they answer the phone and say, “I can’t talk right now, I’m at work.” That means that they are moonlighting and they want our services for their
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I Want My $2
21/01/2020 Duration: 04minErik was a paperboy in his townhouse neighborhood when he was growing up. Now, his friend’s older brother also had a paper route but he didn’t want to have to ask the customers for money to pay for the newspapers, part of which he’d keep and the other part would be given to the newspaper company. So, the brother made a deal with Erik that if he did it for him, Erik could keep 10% of the total profit. Erik would take his 10% before even giving the money to the brother just in case he wasn’t willing to pay up later. The lesson here: make sure you pay yourself first. It’s a lesson he’s learned and implemented many times throughout his career. If you look back on things you used to do early in your career to make money, there are lessons you learned there that you may have forgotten about but could help in your business now. Just think back on those and make sure you’re implementing those lessons today. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Di
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How to Handle an Employee Whose Hearts Not in It
20/01/2020 Duration: 04minSeveral jobs ago, Erik was the manager of a group of software developers and there was one girl in particular there that everybody liked and was very good at her job. Erik could tell, however, that her heart wasn’t in it, she wanted something else out of her career and her life. Erik wanted to figure out what that thing was so he asked her to go with him for a walk because this isn’t the type of thing you ask in front of everyone. They sat on the picnic table and he asked her if her heart was no longer in the job and she said that wasn’t the case, she was just in a funk. So, they went back inside and everything was fine. About a week later, she approached Erik at his desk and asked if they could take a walk and said that since thinking through it, she was no longer into it. They talked through it, there were no issues but she did end up quitting that job and going off on her own. It was an interesting situation for Erik because it had happened a few times before in his career of managing people but he’d ne
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What's Late? Deliverables vs Random Tasks
19/01/2020 Duration: 04minLike many companies, we track everything we do around here. We use a task tracker called Asana. It’s important to keep a pulse on all of the work that needs to be done and whether it’s late or not. Even if something’s not going to be done on time, it’s important to manage the due dates. If there are no rules holding the individuals accountable, then they’re just going to keep building up until they’re no longer manageable. So, we put in a rule that there are no late tasks, everything is up to date or in the future. But then we ran into a problem that certain tasks should not be moved. We have a very defined onboarding schedule and there are tasks associated with it that we set due dates on. Then there are other tasks when the due date isn’t necessarily important; things that the client isn’t waiting for. We realized that we have 2 different kinds of tasks: deliverables (things we told the client we’d have to them by a certain date) and nice-to-have tasks. Take a look at all the work you and your staff
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When You Can Remold the Reality of Your Situation
18/01/2020 Duration: 05minMany years ago when Erik worked for his last employer, he was given a project out of Boise, Idaho which was in real trouble. By the time he was assigned to the project, the customer was furious. Erik decided he was going to save this project. Everyone involved, the client and everyone at the agency said he’d have to fire the team in Boise and hire one in Norfolk, VA where the company was. So Erik went out and met the Boise team and it turns out, there was nothing wrong with them besides the fact that they were located pretty far out. The team was pretty good from a technical perspective. So Erik decided he was going to save them and not fire them. For the next 6 months of the project, there were constant problems, most of which were personality conflicts. He realized as more time went on was that so much damage had been done between the client and the development team that it was just a lost cause. Both sides were unwilling to work with each other further. Eventually, the client fired the entire company fr
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Be Flexible and Prepare for Change
17/01/2020 Duration: 03minRunning a business is very hard and nothing stays the same. You have to continually plan and be ready for change; the market could change, the economy could change, employees could leave, you try a marketing or sales effort and it fails. Never get complacent and think things won’t change. But change is a good thing, it means you’re growing, opening up new opportunities. With change, you’ll be met with new problems. You and your management team should be ready with processes for situations that could happen and you can find the hole in the process where problems need to be fixed. Make sure you have an emergency fund in preparation for potentially bad days but, more importantly, prepared for the amazing opportunities that will come too. — 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 Dai
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Should I Use A Contract For My First Gig?
14/01/2020 Duration: 05minIn this episode Erik talks about whether you should have a formal contract if you do freelance work. Erik admits that in the beginning of his freelance career he did not have a proper contract. He would email clients a proposal, they would agree are the terms, he would do the work, and then he would invoice them. Later, he became a little more sophisticated. He started printing out the proposals and he would have the client sign them before beginning the work. The simple process worked for him at the time and he never got burned. As time went on and Erik got more clients and bigger projects, he hired a lawyer to write up a formal contract. Now we have clients sign a proposal, which includes a couple of short paragraphs written by the lawyers to refer to the terms on our company website. It's a good way to have all the bases covered while speeding up the signing process. But, the real question is whether you need a contract for your first gigs. As sophisticated as our contract process is now you might be
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The Biggest Lesson Learned In Reaching $2M In Recurring Revenue
13/01/2020 Duration: 05minErik was recently asked what the biggest lesson learned was in getting to $2M a year in recurring revenue. Erik is not a big fan of questions like these because it forces you to generalize years of experiences and mistakes into one simple statement. It's almost impossible to do. However, he decided he would give it a shot. After thinking about it he decided that the common theme was to question everything. Question everything you do and question everything your industry does. We started questioning the way we did things and it led to some pretty radical changes in the company. One of the first big changes was we stopped tracking time. We used to track our hours so we would know what to bill our clients. A lot went into calculating how much to charge to cover labor, overhead and everything else. It was time consuming but that was the way we had always done it and we didn’t know another way. But we decided to try billing per project instead and that worked better. Even better than that was when we decide
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Do Not Compromise When Hiring an Employee
12/01/2020 Duration: 05minHiring employees is a very important job that you have to do as the leader of your company in order to keep improving your company. If you’ve ever had a bad employee, coworker, or peer makes you realize you don’t want to take shortcuts on this process. We have a very well-defined hiring process here at Array Digital starting off with a phone call that essentially makes sure that every candidate has the basic skills required by that position. If that works out well, they come in for a face-to-face interview with a couple members of the team where we’ll narrow it down to a much smaller list of candidates. After that, we know what skills they have but we want to ensure they are a company-cultural fit, making sure their core values align with ours. The first thing we do is invite that person to one of our company lunches. This may be a little intimidating; they’ll be going to lunch with 5-8 people that already work at the company. If that goes well, then we’ll move onto the final phase which is the founders
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Stockholm Clients
11/01/2020 Duration: 03minWe have a special guest for today's episode. Kevin Griffin is the owner of Swift Kick - a software training and consulting company in Southeast Virginia. Have you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome? It's an interesting phenomenon that sometimes occurs to kidnapping victims. After weeks and months in captivity a victim may begin to form psychological alliances with the person who's holding them hostage. They will sometimes start to sympathize and become protective of their kidnapper, even if they’re causing them harm. If you're a freelancer or running a small agency it can be easy to fall into the trap of the “Stockholm Client”. What Kevin means by this is it can be easy in the beginning to want to jump on every opportunity. You may find yourself bending over backwards for clients, responding to issues within minutes, or trying to get as many clients as possible, whether they're a good fit or not. You do this because in your mind the worst possible scenario is losing that client. Kevin recently went throu
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The Key To Rapid Business Growth
09/01/2020 Duration: 04minToday, we have a guest host, Scott Baxter, the CEO of PlayYourCourt.com. For those unfamiliar with Scott’s website, it connects tennis players with other tennis players and tennis coaches. His advice is quick and super actionable. One of the things that helped in scaling his business was blocking out the excess noise and focusing on the things that matter to his business. It’s hard to take a step back and look at what really matters but it must be done. For every business, there are usually between 2-5 levers that you can pull that are going to greatly change your business. Take a step back and ask yourself what are the things I could change? If I could do these few things, how would my business change and grow? Do this every couple of months by taking a day off and deciding what those 2-5 growth levers are and then carve out time in your week to make sure you are focusing on those things. Learn to say no to everything else and you’ll find that your business scales at a much more rapid rate. — Erik
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Don't Be Cheap When Sending Mailers
08/01/2020 Duration: 05minIn this episode, Erik talks about a recent mistake that he made in deciding to send out over 300 mailers himself. His mail list was made up of numerous past and present business and personal contacts. First, he obtained a quote for a third party company to print and mail the letters. It was going to cost about $700 for them to print and send the letters, and about another $200 for postage. That seemed high to Erik so he decided to do it himself. He had done these types of mailings before but never for this quantity. It took Erik an entire day just to do the mail merge online and print out the 300+ letters. Then it took him roughly another day to print out the envelopes. The envelopes kept getting jammed, they would print out crooked, some would smear and he would have to print them again, and he could only fit about 10 envelopes into the printer at once so he had to keep refeeding the printer. It was a nightmare. That wasn't even the worst part. About three-quarters of the way into printing the envelopes