Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

In episode 270 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik discusses contracts, monthly recurring revenue, and the details that have helped us communicate our scope of work to clients.

When we sign with someone at Array Digital, we put a lot of effort upfront into the client and engagement. That upfront cost is amortized over the minimum commitment duration of the contract. When a client cancels early, it’s a problem because we do not have the time we expected to earn the revenue to offset our upfront costs.

As an example, every other web agency will charge an upfront fee of $5k - $20k or more to create a website. Not at Array Digital - we charge the same amount every month even when we’re putting a ton of work in at the beginning of the project. But, there’s a minimum number of months that we expect the client to stay with us.

When a client breaks the contract, when they cancel before the minimum commitment is fulfilled, then, contractually, there will be liquidated damages. Instead of trying to figure out what those liquidated damages will be when they cancel, Erik defines what they’ll be at the beginning...when the contract is signed.

By defining how liquidated damages are calculated before the client breaks the contract, it takes the guesswork out of “what it means to break the contract” for the company and for the client. With that definition, Erik is no longer in the position to have to decide what the damages will be each time someone cancels. Instead, he can delegate this task to someone like Katya to simply apply the policy to figure out what the damages will be. The client can calculate it for themselves too. There will be no surprises.

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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!

Being an entrepreneur is risky. You give up stability. You may fail. You may not be able to pay yourself. But, it can also be rewarding; potentially unlimited pay, time with family, and full control of your destiny.

What risks are you taking to grow your company?

In April 2019, we hired Glen to be our Sales Manager. We didn’t have the cash on hand to pay his salary long term, so we had to calculate the risk of hiring him. We calculated that the worst-case scenario was that we could lose up to $60,000 if he didn’t sell anything. In order to hire him, we had to assume that risk and then manage him and the outcomes to try to reduce that risk as much as possible.

It worked out, and the worst case of that risk was not realized, but we took the risk nonetheless. Sometimes you have to take a risk to get ahead. Are you taking enough risk to make it happen?

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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!

In episode 268 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik answers a question asked of him on Twitter by Stuart Crane, the CEO of Voice Metrics. His question was: “What makes an effective sales funnel and landing page?”

Erik stresses that you have to keep in mind that you must bring value to people, even if you’re designing an online system.

There are four steps to funnels.

1. Awareness: It takes seven to fourteen times before people even recognize that your business exists. You need to get in front of people through networking, social media, and any other way you can get individuals to know who you are.

2. Engagement: Once they know you exist, you have to engage with them. Ask questions. Have a conversation. Be interested in what they have to say.

3. Interest: With online sales, the goal is to direct people to a landing page. At this point, you’re pitching them, but what you’re selling is just to visit the landing page. The promise has to be that the landing page will provide more value in the thing they’re interested in.

4. Conversion: A conversion is when the visitor takes whatever action you’d like them to take. You want them to “buy’ whatever it is you’re pitching on the landing page regardless of whether it’s a product, service, or downloading your eBook.

On the landing page, keep it super simple. A landing page is a web page without a header, footer, or anything fancy and the sales copy needs to be focused. Focus just on the offer and have a clear call to action. There should be exactly one thing for the visitor to do on the landing page.

When they convert - when they “buy” what you’re pitching - collect their name, email address, and maybe their phone number with the promise of providing more value if they sign up for your newsletter. Once they’re in your email or text messaging marketing system, continue to provide value with white papers, stats, and other value bombs, and try to convert them into a paying customer.

Have a marketing or entrepreneurial question for Erik? Hit him up on Twitter at @iamerikjolson!

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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 267 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin talks about the connector style of leadership. Connectors naturally interact with others - they connect with others. This is a leadership style that Kevin can relate to.

Kevin is a people person who likes to have a good time and he’ll talk to anyone for any reason. When he started his company, he didn’t know anyone so he would go to networking events in order to meet new people.

When at networking meetings Kevin doesn’t sell to people. He just talks to them genuinely, and at some point, they’ll ask what he does. When they express interest in what he does, then there could be a business connection and opportunity.

One thing Kevin wants to do better is to leverage the network that he’s built over the years. His friend Zack Miller stresses this often to Kevin. He needs to create a process to leverage that network. The network is powerful, but only when that network is activated!

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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!

It took a long time for Erik and Array Digital to get to $1 million, and that was only after a merger of two companies. In total, it took 10 years for Erik to go from $0 to $1 million in annual revenue.

Only 4% of companies make it to $1 million in annual revenue. So a whopping 96% of companies never make it to $1 million, but want to. Knowing that statistics, when Erik recently spoke to a group of newer entrepreneurs titled, he titled his talk: Journey to $1 Million.

That talk will become the basis for a book that Erik plans to publish in 2020. To help work through the stories and clarify the lessons learned, Erik has created a table of contents about Array Digital’s journey to $1 million.

Future episodes of this podcast will expand on that table of contents and flesh out the details of each of the steps, and missteps, along the way. He’ll recount the learnings acquired, sometimes painfully, during the journey. Those recordings will then serve as inputs into the writing that will be done for the book.

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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 lead your team with a participative or democratic leadership style? In episode 264 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin explains the difference between these two leadership styles, and which he personally prefers.

As a participative leader, you are letting your team input their thoughts and taking those thoughts into the decision-making process. A democratic leadership style would be having your team take a vote and then whichever vote wins is what the decision will be, regardless of anyone’s gut feeling.

Kevin considers himself a participative leader. He wants everyone to have a voice most of the time. Collaboration is one of our core values here at Array Digital and team input is very valuable to us. It is important to Kevin that our team feels that they are able to alter the course we are headed in!

Kevin encourages business owners to lead with a participative approach instead of a democratic or directive. The power of the room is more powerful than just Kevin and Erik on their own.

What are you doing to lead your team? Are you increasing team collaboration or discouraging it? How are you bettering your company’s culture? Is your team motivated and willing to follow your direction?

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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!

Whenever Erik goes to the gym, he speaks with the top sales rep of the gym. This individual has been working with this particular gym chain for years, and brings in more orders for new members than anyone else.

Recently, this individual has been talking about how he is looking for a change in his career. What he wants to do, is take his sales skills and bring them to the other gyms in the chain in order to teach other sales reps how to effectively sell memberships. He had been talking about this a lot, but just recently talked to leadership about it, and is getting the opportunity!

The moral of the story is: you can talk about something all you want, but if you do not take action, it is not going to happen. This individual was able to ask leadership for what he wanted for his career, and he got it - something a lot of employees do not do. In business, it is important to speak up and make clear what you want. Sometimes you may not always get the answer you want, but you will not receive anything if you do not ask!

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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’s parents opened a video store when he was in high school. His dad had just retired from the Air Force, and his mother was working for the Federal Government at the time. To help out, Erik worked at the store on the weekends and a few weeknights.

Erik would work the counter checking customers out, and he’d also work the floor helping customers pick videos. During that time he learned a ton about retail and customer interactions.

Customers would constantly ask for recommendations on movies to watch. To make sure he could help, Erik assigned himself “homework”, and ended up watching a lot of movies!

Inevitability a customer would come up to Erik with a movie in hand and would ask him if he’d seen the movie and recommended it. At first, he would tell them yes, even if he didn’t personally like it. But quickly he realized that it was better to give his honest opinion of the movie.

If he didn’t like the movie, or wasn’t a fan of the genre, then he’d tell them. That feedback resonated with customers. Half the time they’d put the video back on the shelf and ask him what other movies he would recommend. That honest feedback put Erik in the position of being a quasi-expert in movie recommendations. That lesson carries forward to Erik’s experience today at Array Digital.

When a recent prospect in the construction industry told Erik that they were spending time and energy on Instagram, Erik questioned why. This company gets their work from a much older demographic that doesn’t hang out on Instagram. The prospect didn’t have an answer as to why they were supporting Instagram, but agreed it wasn’t compatible with their business development strategy.

The lessons learned in high school, and today, is that you should always give people your honest feedback. They may hope to be hearing something else, but they’ll respect what you have to say and respect you for letting them know what you think.

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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!

Bob Pizzini, a new acquaintance of Kevin’s and the owner of iFly in Virginia Beach, served in the military for 26 years. Physical fitness was a big part of Bob’s work-life in the military, and continues to be to this day.

It so happens that many of the team here at Array Digital are very physically fit. We talk about physical fitness often in the office.

As an example, Kevin has been going to the gym at least 3 times a week; Erik is challenging himself to run 1,000 miles this year and also lifts weights at night; Glen lifts weights often; Jamal is an Olympic weightlifter; Shannon rides her bike 15-20 miles...for fun! The others in the office also work out quite a bit. Many of the wins we report in our daily huddle have to do with our physical fitness and achieving our fitness goals.

How does physical fitness fit in with your life or your team or your company? It’s great for us to see each other challenging ourselves. But more importantly, we have to stay healthy to continue to do what 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.

—

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 a salesperson came into our office and left an analysis document for a local company, which was the first time we had seen a digital marketing review. In episode 260 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik talks about the continual development of our digital marketing reviews along with a 17-point checklist.

Within this digital marketing review, we systematically go through a prospect’s digital marketing footprint (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and document it. We have experimented with different versions and are constantly editing our template. We now have a digital marketing review that has a 17-point checklist with everything we check for a prospect. This checklist covers all of our services we define as digital marketing: online advertising, social media, SEO, and websites. We look at how prospects are doing in all of these areas, from the outside in.

When selling to prospects, Erik greatly recommends you have a process to look into how things are going for that prospect. Sometimes a customer will tell you what they need, and sometimes we must figure it out ourselves. The key is to create a review process with a checklist, be methodical, and go through with every single prospect to make sure you are covering all your bases.

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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!