Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Have you ever failed? We definitely have.

Within businesses, ideas, initiatives, we’ve all failed but the most important thing to learn is that failure is necessary to success. You’re going to fail, it’s not always going to work. Failure is what makes you who you are and defines you.

Don’t be afraid to fail because it’s unavoidable.

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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!

We have gone through a few different versions of our website over the last two-and-a-half to three years. The latest version is a blue and white theme, and we've had it for at least a year. We had previous versions that we made several tweaks to along the way. Erik and Kevin would put the tasks in for the team to make changes and they would make them, but no matter how many changes were made they were never really quite satisfied with the old sites.

It got to the point where they knew they wanted something very different, but instead of waiting on tasks to get done by the team Kevin jumped in and started building some prototypes himself. Kevin got his start by building websites many years ago but these days as our CMO he focuses on sales and business development. However, he saw the need and he took the initiative doing it himself. This is a good example of a great leader and executive.

Kevin started by creating the services page of our website and then redoing the homepage. These are the most important pages on the website. Next he'll be tackling the secondary pages that aren't as important. The team is optimizing the website and making it mobile responsive, but Kevin is the mastermind behind the design.

If you’ve seen the new website you’ve seen Kevin's work, and we think it looks pretty good.

Great job, 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!

If you’re a larger company with a larger sales team, you may need something more complex than this. But if you’re an entrepreneur, there’s free options out there.

We made a mistake 2 years ago to get the marketing version of Hubspot, paying about $800/month for a year in a locked in contract. We used some of the features, primarily for sales, deals, and leads. After a few months, we stopped using it for everything except for CRM and tracking leads that Erik and Kevin were pursuing. But all those features are free.

This year, we’ve used it pretty much all year and our sales are up by a lot this year but we’re able to do everything we need with a free account.

We weren’t prepared to use all the features that the other systems and paid accounts have. If you have a small team, it’s just too overwhelming. Until we get to the point where we have multiple salespeople and tons of deals, we’re going to stick to the free version.

Yes, it’s tempting to constantly be updating and trying new platforms, but don’t spend money that you don’t need to. Try to get away with using the basic features first before trying to automate everything. 

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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!

When we first started the newsletter we weren’t sure what to put in it and it wasn’t very good. Erik recalls some of our early newsletters having content that really wasn’t relevant to the work we do at Array. He's never really been a fan of receiving generic email newsletters like this so he decided the newsletter needed to change.

We are now much more methodical about our content and creation of the newsletter. The newsletter goes out once every two weeks and it focuses on tips for improving digital marketing and the latest digital marketing trends. If we have some big company news to share we will add that in the newsletter but the main focus is digital marketing. We also always have a call to action in our newsletter. We feel it's okay to ask for this if we're providing useful information, and from the feedback we receive it seems people do find it useful.

Erik's advice to anyone who is starting a newsletter is to be strategic. Start with sending out your newsletter once a month and gradually move up the frequency as needed. More than once a week is probably not a good idea as it takes a lot of time to put these together and readers can get overwhelmed. Finally, make sure you have good content and that it's relevant to your audience.

If you're interested in reading our newsletter to see how we do it, you can find it at www.thisisarray.com/newsletter. We would love for you to check it out and give us your feedback.

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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!

Always be learning. This sounds obvious and you’ve probably heard it from a lot of people but Kevin took it for granted for a while, not reading books or taking in new content. He changed that up this year taking the time to read books and gain new knowledge.

He’s started using Audible to download books that he can listen to on his 30-minute commute to work. He’s also listened to hundreds of podcast episodes. And of course, he’s recorded these episodes that you’re listening to. Sharing what he’s learned on this podcast helps him to hold the information longer and makes it sink in for him more.

The top CEOs read 60 books a year whereas the average American only reads 1 book a year looking for that million dollar tip that’ll transform their business.

So learning the information is great but sharing the information you’ve learned is even greater.

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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!

For some time now we’ve had the concept of holding quarterly business reviews with each of our clients. This used to take place between our operations team and the client but our team quickly discovered this wasn’t often enough. They took it upon themselves to instead hold monthly calls between them and the client, and the regular communication has worked out so much better.

Now Erik, our CEO, is the one that has the quarterly business review with the client. And, instead of meeting with the director of marketing of that company Erik meets with the owner one-on-one. Most of these reviews take place over lunch and Erik thoroughly enjoys them. During this meeting they take a deep dive into the client’s business and talk about everything from current challenges or wins to plans for expansion, goals, and doing business in general.

Erik opens up the conversation by letting them know that this is a time for them to discuss anything they want and they should feel free to be open and honest. On top of talking about the client’s business goals Erik also asks for feedback on our team and the work we’re doing. He knows clients might be reluctant to have these kinds of conversations with their account executive or the operations team, so he wants the business owner to know that they can share this information with him one-on-one.

Erik has grown to really value his quarterly business reviews with other business owners. It’s a great way to bounce ideas off one another and it’s mutually beneficial. He highly recommends giving them a try.

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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!

Almost every day, we’re meeting with prospects that have websites that do not perform: they load slowly, aren’t optimized, aren’t producing leads. And these are big brands that we’re going after in our region. We always come in and say we can improve your website, increase brand awareness, etc.

There are few that do it well and it’s rare to see a website that has nothing to fix or change. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to start a business, you need to create a website with these basic elements: loads fast, is mobile responsive, has a phone number that people can click to call, and is always up and operating. You don’t have to pay a lot of money for it but it’s essential to have these key features. The website should be secure, mobile-optimized, fast-loading, built for your buyer (is it easy to convert), your social icons should be in the footer, checked for broken links, and optimized for search results.

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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!

About two years ago we read the book Profit First. In the book the author essentially tells you how you can gain control of your finances. Most people consider profit to be the money that's left over at the end of the month. But, the author of this book says profit is something that you need to pay yourself first and whatever is left for the rest of the month is what you get to spend. We put these ideas into practice right away and took a good look into our monthly expenses.

What we found was that we had roughly the same expenses every month with one big exception - payroll. At the time we were paying employees every two weeks, as is fairly common with many businesses. The problem with that is that it meant a couple of months out of the year there were three payrolls instead of two. From an employee's perspective that's not really a bad thing because it's almost like getting extra money in the month. But, from the business side it made it difficult to budget and it really affected the books in the months there were three pay days.

It took a couple of months of tracking expenses to figure this out, but once we did we decided we wanted to standardize our expenses as much as possible. Moving payroll to twice a month required some preparation on our part, coordination with our accountants, and letting our employees know what we were planning to do ahead of time. Our change went into effect a little later than we had planned but it was necessary in order to get everything right.

Since we made the change it has worked out great. We are able to budget and our books are much cleaner. We have never looked back.

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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!

Don’t be concerned with money when you’re first getting started. If you’ve started a business and you’re looking to grow rapidly, you’re probably thinking that money could help with all the issues you come across. Money is a concern no matter how big you get.

You’re going to take financial hits whenever you’re starting a new business venture. Every initiative takes way more effort than you thought so you’re never really prepared. Holding back until you’re completely prepared, therefore, means you’ll never go through with it.

The best entrepreneurs out there don’t focus on how much money they have but how much of an impact they can make.

When Kevin first started his business, in the first 6 months, he didn’t have an income so he worked at a recruiting job and let him know up front that he was trying to start his own business. He stayed there for 6 months then was completely reliant upon his own business for his income.

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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!

A couple of years ago, in the time between Christmas and New Year's, (our typical slow season), Erik had some time to take a deep look into the company’s books. He wanted to see if he could predict how much money the business would make in the coming year based on the contracts we had in place. He looked at the sources of revenue for that year. At the time in 2017 we had four main service categories:

- Software development

- Digital marketing

- Website design

- Website support

He found that out of the four services three of them were predicted to lose money in 2018. It was pretty shocking when he discovered that just to break even and have zero growth in software development he and Kevin would have to secure $700,000 in new software contracts and soon! At the time we still had a couple of software developers on the team and only about two months worth of contract revenue to cover their salaries. On the other hand, we had one full time employee working on digital marketing and numerous contracts for digital marketing services that more than covered his salary. If we could find more work like that, that included a nice profit margin, things could be very different.

Erik knew he had to do something and do something fast! On December 27th, 2017 Erik had the conversation with Kevin and told him his findings. It was the first time they realized they needed to make a change in their business and the change was focusing on digital marketing.

That conversation spawned several more to come in the following weeks. It took about a month before the ultimate decision was made to phase out the other services and focus 100% on digital marketing. And, it was the right one for us. At this point, that is all we do.

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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!