Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

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/

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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!

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.

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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!

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 chocolate layer around the strawberries, couldn't be protected in transit. He didn't have a solution to the problem and he stopped selling the strawberries immediately because he couldn't actually fulfill what he was selling.

This lesson learned has been brought forward at Array Digital. You have to be able to provide, with quality, everything that you sell. Erik is very protective of the services that the company sells.

We have to ensure that we know exactly how to provide the services we sell. There's just no room for selling and then figuring out what you sold. It was a big mistake at the bakery, we simply won't do that now at Array Digital.

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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!

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 right.

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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!

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 commercial building before but he’d owned real estate so he wasn’t too concerned about it.

The downside of buying your own office space means that if one day your company went out of business, well you have a piece of property that you could then lease to someone else.

It’s worked out great, we haven’t yet outgrown it over the past 2 years but if things go well, we’ll end up outgrowing this place in about a year, two at the most and have to start looking for somewhere new.

If that’s something you’re thinking of doing, Erik recommends you do the same.

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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!

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, it overcomes the bad name.

Think about brand confusion and whether you’re going to like your name for the long haul. If you try to morph into something else in the future, how can your name also change with your company? These are the most important factors in choosing a brand name and if you’re not sure it meets these qualifications, pick a new name.

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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!

Service Level Agreements, or SLA, are what to expect when you’re hiring a web hosting company: the response time, the communication, and what you can expect from them if support is needed. We went ahead and put one together recently and it covers a wide range of things, going over projects and what our clients can expect: we have a timeline with deliverables. We also lay out every single service we offer and the different aspects of those services plus the frequency at which you can expect those things to happen.

You have everything upfront of what our clients can expect so there’s no question from our clients of what they can expect. We also use it as a sales tool because most companies like us do not have this; it puts all the issues out upfront and setting expectations from the get-go.

Here’s how you can set one up too: start documenting your services and the frequency of actions that are going to come from your team. We can guarantee this is going to save you a lot of hassles with your clients.

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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 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 him out to Redman, he interviewed with a whole bunch of people, he didn’t get the job which made sense because it was still so early on in his programming career.

The moral of the story: when you fail at something, don’t give up; figure out the next step and take that action.

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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!

Kevin was recently asked by multiple people to be a guest on their podcasts and it was a yes without hesitation. It would give him more practice talking off the cuff and unscripted.

For example, he was recently on a podcast called Rider Flex which will be coming out soon. Rider Flex is a global recruiting and consulting firm out of Denver, CO so their audience is people searching for jobs and their role is to give advice and tips on how to get hired. Kevin was on there as a person in a leadership position who could answer questions on the interview process from the other side of the table: what kind of questions will you ask? What is the hiring process for you?

It made Kevin think about the hiring process here at Array Digital and using it to find the best possible employees.

Have you been on any podcasts? It’s a great thing to put on your LinkedIn that you’re looking for podcast opportunities and speaking engagements. The last two Kevin got were from LinkedIn. If you’re looking to get your name out there, then really put it out there: post it on your social media, your stories, your LinkedIn so that way people who are looking for speakers can find you. Plus anytime you do these podcast interviews, it gives you more content that you can then post on your social accounts.

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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!

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 prospecting; even though he doesn’t have to because we now have a full-time sales guy who prospects most of the time. But with the desire to grow the company to $100 million, Erik realizes this isn’t a one-man job and does that as well. Right now we have the ability to leverage 3 people in the company: Glen, our full-time salesman, Kevin, and Erik.

Erik also wanted to give a shoutout to Kathy Lewis, a radio host for a local series that’s been running for a very long time and is super well-known in the Hampton Roads area.

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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!