Journey To $100 Million

About a year and a half ago, we were putting a tremendous amount of effort into tracking our expenses. We created a whole bunch of bank accounts and processes to track and lower our expenses. But Erik also realized we were doing almost nothing as far as energy and concentrated effort on revenue. So we started tracking metrics like how much we were invoicing and how much out of that was recurring revenue and how much was project-based. This sheet only tracked recurring revenue because we were taking a hard shift away from project work so everything had to revolve around our recurring revenue. We were looking to find our annual growth rate. About a year ago is when we stopped taking on project work. At one point we were at 255% annual growth in recurring revenue at the time when we were transitioning from projects to recurring. At our worse, we were growing at 61% year over year. Right now we’re growing at 95% and Erik still feels we haven’t even gotten started. It’s really gotten him thinking about what to

We have recently been in a sales slump, despite lots of meetings, prospecting, etc. The wrong thing to do during a sales slump is to start signing clients that are not a fit simply because you want to hit some numbers. It’s easy to fall into that but don’t start to sign clients that are going to frustrate the team, drop our NPS score, sign clients that won’t really work effectively with us. One of the great things about having monthly recurring revenue is that we do always have activity and an inflow of cash. And while we are trying our hardest to get some new sales, we don’t want to stray from our goals and values in order to do that. — 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

Erik was recently invited to speak at an organization he used to be a president of, the Project Manager Institute’s local chapter. They were having their 25th anniversary as a chapter and Erik was invited to speak about his PMI experience. Erik showed up, there were no slides allowed, just him, a microphone, and a crowd. It was the first time he’s done that type of talk where it’s basically just storytime with Erik J. Olson. He talked about a time when he needed more out of his career which is when he went out and found PMI, his people. They had reduced all of their project management wisdom down to a book which was a goldmine. PMI was there for him again when he was out of a job and was looking for the next chapter of his life and he was able to lean on the chapter and learn a lot from them; this was also the time when he became the president of the chapter. It felt good to give back that story about why it was meaningful in his life and the major role the people had played. — Erik J. Olson is an awa

Anytime someone asks Erik what his favorite business book is, he almost always says Profit First. It’s written by Mike Michalowicz and it’s a fantastic book that Erik can’t stop talking about that’s completely transformed his relationship with the funds in the company. Before reading this book, the company had one bank account called Operating Expenses and everything went in and out of there: all the revenue went in and all the funds for operating expenses came out of there. Erik and Kevin always felt weird about taking the profit out of there at the end of the quarter because they had no idea what that money represented or what ticking time bombs were out there where money was owed. Well, after implementing Profit First, they were no longer scared. As an entrepreneur, you are naturally inclined to not pay that much attention to your accounting reports because they’re frankly not reality. What really matters is how much money is in your bank account at the end of the day. This book says that this is our nat

Here at Array Digital, we’re pretty lenient; we offer PTO and the opportunity to work from home when necessary plus 4 remote employees who work from home every single day. The majority of the team is expected to be in our Chesapeake office from 9-5 because that’s when our clients are working. Sometimes, though, we need to work from home when it makes sense. This issue is, however, when we get distracted at home because it’s easy to do. If you’re at home, you have to actually be working. The other issue is when employees work late hours from home, getting a lot of work done, working after hours but no one actually knows you’re doing any of that; you’re getting no credit. That’s a con of working from home. Do you have remote workers or people that work from home? An office is very valuable and it’s worked well for us but we’re not sure that it’ll be sustainable as we continue to grow our company and team. — Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Ar

Today, Erik calls out a few of Array Digital’s employees but not for what you might think, but because they are great employees. Each one has had a situation where they were moving and would be leaving the company as a result but Erik and Kevin have talked them into staying even though it means they will be working remotely. Jason started working for Kevin back in the day and when he moved down to Orlando with his girlfriend, Kevin convinced him to work remotely because he’s a web designer...an amazing one. We also have Katya who was one of Erik’s early hires back at 80|20. Her husband got a job in Jacksonville and even though she started as an Administrative Assistant, she’s since taken on so many other responsibilities. Then we have Ryan who was actually hired as a remote web developer. And finally, we have Jamal, our Project Manager, who Erik hired as a software development tester when he was a senior in college. He takes care of all the onboarding and many of the client interactions. He recently mo

Quality is one of our core values at Array Digital. We now have a documented process for handling quality assurance. Of course, for every company, you’re going to mess up something, somewhere but we want to keep that to a minimum. This ensures we put out quality work and keeps us from getting in trouble with our clients. We have a process where someone completes a task for a client, another peer reviews that piece of content before it’s put out or sent to the client. It’s just a double-check that the work is good, it’s very simple. We also hold a lot of team meetings at Array Digital so that we can help each other with any issues we may have and to discuss plans and initiatives we have for clients. We have a ton of checkpoints, a lot of peer review, and I know that it saves us from a lot of issues with clients. Do you have a quality assurance plan? Are you putting out sub-par work? It’ll serve you very well to put together a plan with several checkpoints throughout to make sure you’re turning over your bes

Erik has talked before about payment terms and the importance of getting the money your clients owe you as quickly as possible. Most companies ask for net 30 payments but that puts you into a cashflow bind. It would be ideal to have a net -30 but in reality, the best you can get is net 0 which means you get paid before starting the work. For us, we bill on the first of the month for that month’s work. We want all of our clients to pay by ACH. Recently we did an experiment and offered a 1% discount to people who decided to pay by ACH instead of by check (which is just a pain). Two of our 20 clients who were paying by check converted to ACH which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s 10%. Would you prefer to keep that 1% or get your money upfront and sacrifice that 1%? It’s not good enough that you’re making enough money because you’re always going to run into cash flow problems. If you’re not doing ACH and you’re not asking for payment upfront, well, you have some improvements that you can make. — Erik J. Ols

There’s an index you can do to quickly figure out who you’re A, B, C, and D players are on your team. Here’s how: Draw out a quadrant (four boxes) with ‘Core values’ on the y-axis and ‘Performance’ on the x-axis. In the top left box, you’ll put the letter A, then B in the next, C in the bottom right, and D in the bottom left. If you’re in the top quadrants, then that employee meets your core values. Across the bottom, if they are on the right side, then it means they meet performance. What you should look out for are the C players. They have a great performance but they don’t abide by your core values. What this looks like is an employee that’s cocky, knows he/she is great at their job but they’re not a team player; every one hates them, they don’t work well with the others. They will eat away at your A and B players who will get so sick of that C player that they quit their jobs. This person is called a “terrorist”; you need to identify them and get rid of them as soon as possible. So do this little exer

Do you subscribe to email newsletters? We certainly subscribe to quite a few and some of them provide value while others don’t (in which case we unsubscribe). Today Erik lets you know about the newsletter we have here at Array Digital: sent out every 2 weeks, it includes the latest and greatest things happening in digital marketing as well as entrepreneurial advice. It’s complete with the ups and downs and how to take advantage of the things happening in modern marketing. You can subscribe. Of course, it’s free and it combines all of these into one email complete with all the gifs and memes to make your day brighter. So, what are you waiting for? https://thisisarray.com/about-us/newsletter/ — 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 &am

At Erik's last job as an employee, he received a not so great annual review. At the time he already knew that it was time to leave to work for himself, and he had expressed to his supervisor that he wanted more out of his career. The supervisor said that Erik had "ambition", but it was said in a negative manner. The supervisor didn't appreciate Erik's ambition - that he wanted to achieve more. The supervisor was part of the bureaucracy and played the game. We don't play those bureaucratic games here at Array Digital. It actually goes against our core policies of Honesty. When Erik's supervisor dinged him for being ambitious, he knew it was time to go. There is no time in life for such nonsense - his old supervisor was simply wrong. Ambition is not a bad thing. Never apologize for being ambitious. — 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

Erik used to co-own a bakery with his wife. She worked there full time and Erik worked there after working his full time job, doing mostly back office work. He'd come up with business ideas and would implement them at the bakery. He started having the staff ship pound cakes across the country, and were able to charge a premium for shipping them. The problem was that the employees had to actually package the cakes and ship them which lead to more work for them, and sometimes they didn't know what to do. Selling pound cakes online worked out well enough, and Erik decided to ship their chocolate covered strawberries as well. Once he started shipping strawberries though, he started getting complaints right away. He couldn't figure out why the product was getting damaged in transit. Finally, Erik asked a customer to send a picture of the strawberries. The strawberries were completely destroyed by the time they arrived to the customer. It was a problem with the shipping and the strawberries, and the fragile choc

So Erik scrambled and started his Eagle Scout project at a nearby park. He and a crew of volunteers worked for a weekend and started a project, but he dropped the ball and didn't go back to finish it until about a month later. So much time had passed that the park ranger finished the project because Erik dropped the ball. Oh no...if he didn't finish the project he couldn't get his Eagle Scout badge or his license! So Erik asked if there was any other work he could do. The park ranger gave him a second chance at another project. Erik and his crew accepted the challenge, finished the project, and then Erik got his Eagle Scout and his driver's license. Erik learned a ton from the experience. 1. You have to hold other accountable for what they say they are going to do. Erik's dad held him accountable, as did the park ranger. 2. You have to hold yourself accountable. If you say you're going to do something, you have to follow through. 3. If you fail to follow through then make sure to follow up and make it r

The office space that we’re currently in is one Erik actually owns and bought about 2 years ago. The first office space we were in was really small although it was tri-level; go down and you’re in a basement that we used as a conference room and up to find the team’s workspace. It was in a really old building but it kept having problems. For example, the week we moved in, the AC was broken and we couldn’t move in then when it got cold out, the heat didn’t work so we had to be out of the office again. Then all along the way, there were so many problems that the team couldn’t actually work out of there consistently. So, Erik decided to find a new office closer to where he lived. He was looked at one that was essentially just a shell of a building – concrete floors, concrete walls – and he bought it with the plan to fix it up for several reasons: 1) to get out of Norfolk and be closer to home; 2) he knew the company would be here for a couple years and it would take a while to outgrow it. He had never owned a c

The name of Erik’s previous company was 80|20 picked because he was looking for a company name that was short, abstract, and related to business (the 80/20 rule) with an available domain name. About a month or two into it, someone asked if it meant “80% protein to 20% fat.” Turns out that’s the ratio of hamburger meat and there was a local restaurant in Norfolk called 80/20 Burger Bar and there turned out to be a lot of brand confusion because of this. So he had to start rebranding it as 80|20 Software Consulting because of the brand confusion. Kevin’s company name was ID Web Studios. Ironically, they both wanted to change their names when they joined together as business partners because they both hated the names they were coming into the partnership with. So the company rebranded as Array Digital. If you’re thinking about getting into business, the company name frankly doesn’t matter that much. There’s a lot of huge companies out there with bad names, right? But once you build up your brand’s reputation,

Erik started his career as a construction project manager because he had a degree in civil engineering for about 6 years then moved to custom software development which he did for about 15 years. Seems like a huge change in careers, and it was. But there was a method to his madness. About 3 years in, he had an opportunity to interview with Microsoft. Back in the day, Microsoft was a powerhouse and every programmer wanted to work there. He applied and got a phone interview. He interviewed with another programmer and he gave him a question that really stumped Erik. He had no idea how to answer the question and upon hanging up the call, Erik felt like he’d failed. Instead of sulking and cutting his losses, he worked to find out the answer to the question; he coded a solution, found that it wasn’t optimal, reworked it. He emailed the answer and the code he had worked to prove the answer was correct to the interviewer. And because of that, he got through to the next part of the interview process. They flew hi

Today, Erik gives a quick update on some of the things he’s been working on in the company recently. Things have changed for him on a personal level: In the beginning, Erik was involved in every aspect of the company but as the team has gotten larger, they’ve hired specialists that can take on the different services that we offer and focus on those areas which means Erik feels he’s not as needed. But he still comes into the office every day despite feeling like he doesn’t need to because there’s always somewhere he can lend a hand. Nowadays he focuses on 3 different areas and operations really isn’t one of them except when it comes to internal, cultural issues. Even though the team is who interacts with clients externally, he plays a hand in the things that happen internally. He’s also made a point of getting in front of his clients on a regular basis; seeing 2-3 clients every week, writing them letters, taking them out to lunch, understanding what’s going on in their business, etc. The third thing is p

Do you have a communication plan? Well, Kevin is here to talk about the communication plan we’ve worked hard to put together over the years. Communication is the most important thing you can have with your clients. Often times when we’ve had issues in the past and we’ve sat down with the team and had a lessons learned breakdown of what went wrong and where, it usually comes down to communication. Our communication plan starts from when you’re a prospect to officially becoming a client and it’s not just how we’ll communicate with you but also how you’ll communicate with us. So let’s start from the very beginning at sales. We set up a 15-minute call or a meeting on-site and then a more formal digital review. We have a kick-off meeting once you come on board then a strategy meeting once you’re a client. Throughout the entire process, there’s communication between the client and our project manager, Jamal, who will also send you a welcome packet once you officially become a client. This is an extensive packet

Many years ago when Erik and his wife owned a bakery, they were pretty unsure of how to go about advertising. They tried different things: coupons, running ads in the paper, he even applied for co-op dollars to offset advertising. Facebook advertising was really successful because it was highly targeted and he was able to target brides with wedding cakes, just for one example. He thought one time that they could run a print article in a local newspaper because it would cover an entire area. In this area, there’s a regional newspaper and one specifically for each city in the region. For Chesapeake, it’s called The Clipper and it’s an insert in the regional paper. So Erik ran ads in The Clipper which was focused on the geographical area where the bakery was. And it was pretty successful so he thought if he could advertise to the whole region, that would really improve their business. So one Sunday, the most popular day for the newspaper, he ran an ad that went to the entire region: 1.7 million people. He prep

Erik retells a story of how he flew all 472 employees to Las Vegas for the holiday party. The company finally broke $100 million and they've been saying they'll throw a huge party when they do. There's a large room with many round tables that seat 8, there's a dance floor and a band, and people dancing and having fun. The emcee, Zack Miller, grabs the microphone, tells a few jokes, and then he introduces me and calls me to the floor. As Erik walks out to the middle of the floor, he sees many employees he's known for a long time. But there are many new faces too because the company has grown so fast. He then proceeds to tell the story of the long journey to get to where they are at that point. The Journey to $100 Million. By the time this happens it's Dec 7, 2030. Erik's story is about a future event that hasn't occurred yet, and it's told in the present or past tense. The concept is called a Painted Picture. The more details that you can provide in a painted picture, the more realistic it is that the even