Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Like 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 have on your plates, determine what is essential, make those deliverables, and make sure they aren’t late.

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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.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Many 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 from the project, him included. Since Erik had put so much time into the project, he had accepted ownership of the project and its outcome. When it went down in flames, so did his career at that company and he was branded as someone who cannot deliver.

He realized that he should have fired the Boise team from the project - not the company. He should have realized that the project could not be saved.

When you are put into a new situation, you have the opportunity to remold the reality of that situation, but only if you act quickly. 

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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.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Running 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.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

In this episode Erik talks about a big event Array Digital has coming up soon. It's called the State of Digital Marketing Address and it's taking place February 20, 2020.

We're pretty good at putting together a Meetup that takes place once a month in Norfolk, Virginia. It's called Marketers Anonymous and we’ve been putting it on for about a year and a half now. We usually have at least 40 local marketers attend these learning events where we talk about all things marketing. It’s a free event that features one or two speakers talking about things that have worked for them and trends they see for the future.

This year we’re going to ramp it up and host a bigger event. We're looking to get 150 to 200 business owners and marketers to attend the event we’re calling the State of Digital Marketing Address. The name resembles the State of the Union Address and that is on purpose. We're going to have a presentation for roughly 45 minutes and the rest of the evening will be networking, drinks, and hors d'oeuvres. We're going to focus on digital marketing trends for the coming year and how they will impact business. This will be a paid event but tickets are cheap.

So if you're interested, and you're in the area, come on down for some food, drinks, learning, and networking. Tickets are on sale now at www.stateofdigital2020.com. We’ll see you at the Slover Library on February 20th!

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Kevin starts this episode by quoting Bill Gates, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Kevin wholeheartedly agrees.

Kevin recounts how for years he steered clear of unhappy customers. Whenever someone became unhappy he tried to move away from them as fast as possible. Kevin likes everybody to be happy. Unhappy customers cause tension and problems and Kevin's just not a fan.

Now when we have unhappy customers we have a full-on Lessons Learned meeting with the team. We dig into all of the issues, we write up our findings, and we share it with the client. We go through this process every time something goes wrong.

As the business continues to grow we will always have new problems, and bigger problems. It’s inevitable. We always have to improve and learn from our mistakes. We also have to thank our unhappy customers who help us improve our processes and become a better company.

This came up for us recently when a long-term client who used to rate us a three or four on our Net Promoter Score (NPS) changed their rating to a 10. This is proof that you can make an unhappy customer happy and when that happens it's a wonderful thing. So thank your unhappy clients because they help you grow.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

In 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 surprised to hear Erik doesn't think you do. At least not in the beginning. It might cost you thousands of dollars to have a contract written up by a lawyer for a gig that might only make you a few hundred dollars. You might decide you don't want to continue doing that kind of work, or that you don't like the terms that were written. It's a lot of money to spend when you're just starting out.

The main thing to focus on in the beginning is validating your offering. Get others to hire you, approve of your work, and then get paid for it. The rest will come later.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Erik 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 decided to move to recurring revenue. That changed everything.

Even though we were no longer billing by the hour we were still keeping timesheets. It didn't really make sense to continue doing that since we weren't billing by the hour so we got rid of that too. We very rarely used the information from timesheets so it made sense to move on. Similarly, we stopped call tracking for ourselves and our clients. We found most of the calls were spam calls and it didn't make sense to keep investing time in that.

The moral of the story is question everything. Question what you're doing and if it's not working change it.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Hiring 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’ call which is a call with Erik and Kevin.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

We 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 through something like this with an old client. They had been a dream client for over six years but they were slowly becoming a very needy client. Kevin found himself working 10 to 12 hour days just to keep up with them. Nothing he did was good enough for them. Everyone he told about this asked him why he hadn't fired this client. He didn't have a good answer.

Then one day he realized he needed to cut ties. It was no longer working out. He was afraid of the fallback but he did it anyway and it’s been a huge weight off his shoulders ever since.

Kevin’s advice if you're dealing with Stockholm Clients is it’s okay to part ways. There will always be other clients. Drop the bad ones and seek out the good ones.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!

Early in 2019 Erik made a resolution to run a thousand miles that year. He wasn't sure how he would do it but he calculated he would have to run two and 3/4 miles everyday. He decided he would run three miles a day to give himself a little bit of a buffer. That would put him about ahead about 80 miles which meant he would be done about a month before the year was over.

It was really hard in the beginning. He had shin splints every day and his calves were really tight for about the first six months of the year. He doesn't really consider himself a big runner so it was definitely a challenge for him. Finally around July the pain and tightness started to decrease. He started running four and five miles a day, and sometimes up to eight miles a day on the weekends. About two months before Halloween he realized that if he kept up his current pace he could finish the thousand miles by Halloween. He kept at it and that's exactly what he did. He met his goal at the end of October.

This was the first year that Erik set a resolution that could be measured and would take him most of the year to complete. Many people say they don't believe in making New Year's resolutions because they set goals all the time, and others because they know they won't stick with them. The timing of when you make a resolution doesn't matter. What matters is if you make a promise to yourself that you keep it. You have to take your goals seriously if you want others to take you seriously. If you're not regularly setting goals you're just getting by in life.

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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.

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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.

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For more information on the show, and to check out past episodes, go to journeyto100million.com!