Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Back when Erik co-owned a bakery with his wife, a lot of people that they knew would ask for a freebie or for a discount. At first they complied. But they realized they were doing just as much work as for anyone other customer, but were doing it at no cost.

They gave the discount because of the social pressure of being asked for a discount from someone they knew. They tried saying no to some requests, but the social pressure was very difficult to overcome - saying no caused a lot of conflict they'd rather avoid.

They came up with the concept of the Friends and Family discount. Once in place, Erik and his wife could say yes to the friends and family that asked for a discount, but they were able to control the amount they discounted by establishing their own policy in advance. Their policy was to discount 10 - 15%, but that's it.

The same circumstance, when people ask for something for free or at a discount, happens at Array Digital. Often they get asked for a free website by someone who they really want to help. But each website costs the company thousands of dollars in labor and fees that the company has to pay for, and they can only give away so much.

To control how much free work they do, they've established a policy for what services they'll give away, and how and when they'll do that.

As an example, the company will give away one free website per year. But only to a nonprofit and only under other circumstances. Not everyone who asks get a free website - they are given away under the company policy that's been established.

This policy at Array Digital is a clear lesson learned from Erik's bakery days when he and his wife established the Friends and Family discount policy. Saying no to discount requests is hard to do when you know the person making the request. Find a way to say yes, but under your terms.

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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!

If you’re unsure what NPS is, it stands for Net Promoter Score and it’s used to gauge a company’s relationships with their clients. It serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research and is correlated with revenue growth. You ask every customer you have a simple question: “How likely would you be to refer us to a colleague or friend?” on a scale from 0-10.

So what is a good NPS score? Well let’s give you a few examples: FexEx has a -9, CVS has a -10, and Apple is 47. Right now the highest NPS score that Kevin could find on the Internet is Costco with a score of 79. Anything over 70 is world-class.

Today, Kevin updates you on our current NPS score. When we started, we had a negative score because we had a lot of hosting clients, clients we didn’t really interact with because we simply hosted their website. But we set a goal and kept increasing that goal as we hit and surpassed it each quarter. Our team has worked very hard to get that score up, particularly our project manager, Jamal.

We’re happy to report that in less than a year, we’ve gone from a negative NPS to a score of 75. We have surveyed every client we work with after 90 days because at that point they’ve done enough work with them for them to know what kind of company we are and work we do.

So huge kudos to the entire Array Digital team because everyone is responsible for that score; everyone interacts with the clients, everyone is working to meet these deadlines for the clients and create great relationships with them.

So do you do NPS? Are you tracking the success, satisfaction, and relationship you have with every single client? If not, then you’re just rolling the dice. You’ll hear not only the things that your company is doing well but also the things that could use some improvement.

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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!

Back when Erik co-owned a bakery with his wife, he worked full time at his day job and he helped at the bakery by taking care of all the back office administrative work. There was a lot of paper documentation that Erik had to take care of - receipts, time sheets, invoices. Lots of paper.

Erik and his wife were very busy and the paperwork would pile up. Organizing and filing the papers was the last thing Erik wanted to do. He'd only work on the pile of papers once every 3-6 months, and the pile would grow to be two or three feet high! The physical stack of papers, and the visible reminder that he was behind on his filing work, was a constant source of stress for him.

He decided that he didn't want to see all those papers anymore. He put the existing pile of papers in a box and shoved them into the closet, and scanned all new paperwork and shred it. Everything got scanned and shredded.

He's pulled that concept forward to the company. Array Digital is 99% paper free.

By scanning and saving to a company share, it's very easy to search for and find a document. Files are named with the date, vendor, and dollar amount to make searching very easy. It's so helpful that Erik will never, ever, go back to a paper based system again.

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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, Kevin talks about letting emotions drive business decisions.

When Kevin meets with prospects or clients, sometimes he can tell that they have an emotional attachment to certain things or concepts. An example is if they want to focus one a specific keyword for search.

But often you should remove emotion and look at the data. Maybe the keyword you're emotionally attached to is not the best keyword for you. If you look at the data, there could be another and better keyword to focus on. You should pick based on data, not emotion.

Do the research, look at the data, and make a decision after removing the emotion.

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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!

A long time ago when Erik was working at his first software development company, he was the manager over about 6 developers. When he first started, everything was going well but as time went on, he started to hear grumblings about this facility they’d invested in in Dallas, TX. It was huge but they were only occupying about a quarter of it. The company had over-invested in a facility because they’d anticipated a very large contract but that contract never came.

That was a really big lesson for Erik because even though it didn’t affect him directly, it affected his company and it taught him that you should not be obligating resources with your own money if you don’t have an obligation from a client that’s not going to support you.

This issue lingered at the company for months so Erik went to his supervisor and asked that he give him a heads up if there were ever layoffs. Well, a couple of weeks went by and he tells Erik “Today’s the day. We’re laying off most of your staff except two, you and one other person. Starting in about an hour.”

Erik was told to go back to his desk, act normal, and then he’d accompany each of the employees back to HR, they’d get laid off, escorted out, and then the next person would come in for a meeting. It continued like this one by one until his whole staff was gone.

Looking back on it, Erik regrets not taking all of the staff members into his office and having a very honest and frank conversation with them that the company isn’t doing well and today is the day that it’s happening. He knows he should have at least given them a heads up even though he had no control over the circumstance but it was an overwhelming situation and just an awful day.

We’d be interested to know if you’ve ever had any layoff situations. Tweet Erik @iamerikjolson with your stories; he’d love to hear them.

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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 measure many KPIs on a weekly basis, and several of them revolve around social media.

For our own brands - Kevin, Erik, and Array Digital - our goal is to post 70 times per week. We've posted as many as 196 some weeks.

This quarter we changed our KPIs to be more granular. We track social media followers with our quarterly goal being an audience of 25,500 and we're well on our way to reaching that stretch goal. We also now track social media impressions with a goal of over 55,000 impressions.

We set goals that are high. What goals are you setting to expand your social media footprint? Instead of just tracking one post at a time, try to figure out your overall social media impact.

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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’ve talked in the past about Marketers Anonymous, our meetup that started in Norfolk, VA that is an excellent networking opportunity for local marketers. We expanded into Newport News and Orlando. Why Orlando? Well, at one point we had two clients there and we also have two employees, web designers, that work down there. So at one point, we thought it would be a really good idea to make new connections and meet other marketers in that area; Marketers Anonymous was a great way to do that!

Erik still thinks it’s a decent plan but the execution of said plan just fell flat. We pulled Marketers Anonymous out of Orlando altogether. It was extremely difficult to break into a new market when we didn’t know anyone and we were just basically dropping in once a month. Erik had a theory that you could build a network remotely, you didn’t actually have to be physically in the place. But he wasn’t able to expand his network beyond those initial contacts because he simply wasn’t around.

Think about your current network: it’s formed because you’re in a particular geographic area, you go to events, you see the same people over and over again. Building a network takes time...a long time.

With Orlando, he just didn’t have that opportunity and there was too much to do here to take the time to set up meetings and cultivate relationships prior to our monthly trips. We would essentially fly into the city, have the meetup, and fly back that night without, frankly, the resources to be able to just hang around in the city. We’ve put the whole Orlando initiative on hold, except of course our awesome employees who are down there that we’ll never drop. We need to work on dominating the marketing industry in Norfolk and once we’ve truly done that, then we can move to other areas and do the same there.

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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!

Do you have any tools you feel like you’re “supposed” to use but don’t? Or any processes you’re “supposed” to follow but you really don’t?

We certainly do here at Array Digital and Erik has had this problem for basically his whole career. And a lot of times you’re paying for these tools...and they’re not cheap.

He’s noticed this cycle where we have a shiny new tool in front of us and we buy the subscription and we use the crap out of it for the first couple of weeks then we just fall out of the habit of using it regularly.

Kevin recently did an episode about Hubspot which we’re paying $500/month for a plan that we’re not using. And so we’re going to cut it when we reach the 1-year ending of our subscription and drop back to the free one.

Same thing with processes: we have processes galore here, so much so that we get overwhelmed with the number of processes and forget that they even exist. We take the time to write up these extensive processes and we recreate it or do it another way. This happens all the time in organizations and it’s a waste of time and resources because you’ll probably end up doing it inefficiently and you’re creating confusion.

If you’re actually using a tool to its full capacity and you’re getting value out of it, then paying for it makes sense. But if not, you’re wasting your time, your efficiency, and your money. When you find something you’re not using, either cut it or reposition it into your processes that are already set.

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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 Erik was a 2-man shop, he worked pretty much non-stop. Every once in a while, his family or someone would interrupt wanting to do something non-work-related. One particular Saturday, he went to the movies with his family, finishing up some code right before they set out. And as he was sitting in this dark movie theater surrounded by his family, he realized that he might have done something wrong, injecting a bug that he didn’t realize.

He went out into the hall, checked his phone and sure enough, the website was down and it had been down for about an hour and a half. And luckily no one had noticed or alerted the company of the website being down, but the website was down for a total of 3 hours before he was able to get home and fix it.

So he got home and got the website back up and running but it made him realize that he needed help. He needed someone who would assure the quality of the work he was putting out. He had another coder at the time and was worried she may have been doing the same thing so he knew he needed to hire a tester who would check all the work that they were speeding through in order to get out on deadline. So he hired Jamal, who still works with us, as an intern to quality-test. He is now our project manager.

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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 episode 271 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin talks about the power of your personal Rolodex. What Kevin means by that, is the collection of the people you rely on, you trust, and whose services you use. With the use of these individuals within your Rolodex, you gain the power to grow your relationships with existing customers, as well as close prospective customers.

Say, for example, you have a customer talking to you about having issues with their accounting or taxing. You, therefore, recommend a CPA group that you have used, and feel would help them. For Kevin, he would recommend Jones CPA group, because not only are they our client, but our CPA as well! In doing this, you just gave that customer a referral that will turn into good business.

Because of this, you are then viewed as a trusted advisor and have built a stronger relationship with that customer. This shows that individual that not only do you provide great services but great referrals as well. It shows that doing business with you does not just get them the services, but also the Rolodex and access to other companies we work with.

If you can be that referrer, and that person with the Rolodex based on the network you've built, you become way more valuable. You will find individuals that you help, start to refer you new business. And when pitching to new clients, you can make them aware of everything else that comes along with hiring you! Using your connections is powerful. Look at your connections and the people you do business with, and see what customers you have that may benefit from intros to them - it will go a long way!

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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!