Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Everyone has those days where they feel overly tired and wish they can skip their early morning plans. In episode 259 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin talks about the “do it anyway” mentality.

Kevin gives credit to Andy Forsilla and his podcast, MFCEO, for this hustle mentality. Kevin’s alarm goes off at 5 am to go to the gym before work and some days it’s easier to turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. The real problems arise during the days when you have plenty of time and simply do not want to get out of bed.

Kevin has been abiding by the “do it anyway” mentality. He tells himself to act now and to get it done with and get the day started. We only have a certain amount of time on this earth, and you gotta get the work done. Try the “do it anyway” mentality! Wake up, get your tasks done, and you’ll feel way more accomplished. Not only that, but you’ll feel a lot better, and start to overcome the things that normally block you!

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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 258 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik discusses how he recently started deleting emails, leaving zero remaining in his inbox. Erik clears out his mailbox fully about every six months, something that causes him many mixed feelings.

Although Erik loves it when he clears out his email, he often wonders where all the emails and actions are! However, Erik is able to put his mind at ease when he realizes that he has put together a solid team and assigned them to take over the operational work. Communication with the customer and “boots on the ground” details no longer go through Erik, but instead goes through the team.

Inbox zero is beneficial to Erik because he is able to say organized and stay on task, but he must adapt to the fact that he is no longer needed on certain assignments. Overall, he feels accomplished knowing he has an amazing team that can take over the work. When the team can take care of this other work, Erik can go where he is needed. Inbox zero allows Erik to highlight the fact he is not needed for operational tasks but needed elsewhere!

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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!

Do you have a bold vision and mission? If you’re subscribed to this podcast, you probably do. However, is it defined and written down? Ours here at Array Digital is to dominate digital marketing in Hampton Roads (what we call our area) - it’s very direct, it has an intent, and it’s something that we can measure. That’s our three-year plan, and our vision is the podcast total.

In episode 257 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin uses Array Digital’s goals as an example to explain how to craft a mission statement for your business. The key takeaways are to make it short, focus on a bold goal you’re excited to accomplish, and keep it simple, stupid!

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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!

Here at Array Digital, we no longer bill by the hour. When we did, CEO Erik J. Olson had to do a lot of calculations to figure out - what is the correct hourly rate? There are so many factors at play, and it’s hard to determine what to base your rate on. Is it the going rate nationally or locally? Do you base it off the given skill set or resources use? Or, do you just pick a number you feel the service is valued at? This is only the beginning of the idiosyncrasies of determining wage.

To find the minimum, you need to know what your costs are. We still have the spreadsheet that helped us land on a number, but we’ve since switched to monthly charges and yearly salaries to ease on the process. In this episode, Erik will weigh the pros and cons of each method of paying employees and explain why Array Digital ultimately switched to salary to save time, paperwork, and give workers what they’re worth.

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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 255 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin has a trick to share with you regarding client communication.

We have phone calls and meetings on a constant basis with our clients in order to ensure we are doing our job to the best of our ability. But, every other week we send out digital marketing reports to our clients in order to explain the touchpoints, recommendations, and analytics of the campaigns we are running.

Along with these reports, we have one of our team members record themselves explaining all aspects of the report so our clients can better understand the information. Sending these videos not only allows us to get the faces of our team in front of our clients, but also provides us insight on how engaged our clients are by seeing if they have opened the reports.

These video reports have been a great tool thus far. If you are sending an update to a client for a project, ad campaign, or anything at all, you can use tools like Loom to record yourself along with your screen to improve communication. We have been doing this for about a year now, and our clients have given us great feedback on how helpful these reports are!

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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 254 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik has a tactical piece of advice on a tool that we use for our company: Zapier. Array Digital could not operate without Zapier, especially with the great majority of our work being cloud-based.

Here at Array Digital, we are 99% cloud-based. The 1% exception is the video and audio editing we do with downloaded platforms. With Zapier, we are able to connect these cloud-based systems in order for different data to be moved around to its needed platform. For example, our Zapier is configured with things like our Facebook Ads account, so when we get a lead form from FB, this information can automatically get sent to our sale’s Slack channel or inputted into a Google Sheet.

The more automated our systems are, the better. This is due to the fact that this does not have to be done by a team member, and a team member does not have to remember to do it. Anytime you have to rely on someone to remember to do a task, it occasionally gets forgotten, and the work does not get done. Whenever you are able to automate work that someone would have to remember, you are doing better!

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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!

Are your team members sharing their wins with everyone on the team? In episode 253 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin talks about how we talk about our wins in the huddles we hold every morning.

Every morning at 9:17 each team member takes about a minute to talk about their issues, tasks, and then ends with their wins from the day before. Everyone on the team should have a win, and it is really cool to see the wins that everyone has for the day prior, no matter how big or small. Something as small as getting a new book, or something as big as landing a new client counts as a win - we just want to hear the wins our team members are having on a daily basis!

No matter what, everyone should have a win, even if they had a bad day. Sometimes it is hard for people to come up with these wins, but is important for everyone to share their wins as it is a great tool for team building. If you are not discussing wins within your company, start doing it - however big or small the wins might be.

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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 252 of Journey to $100 Million, Erik talks about how he wants our meetings here at Array Digital to be shorter and better planned.

Erik noticed that when we have meetings scheduled, we tend to stick to the duration of the calendar invitation regardless of how much time we really need. Instead, moving forward Erik wants us to set all meetings to half an hour long. In doing this, he hopes that the meetings will kick off on time, an agenda will be created, and if team members only have 30 minutes of time, they will be more organized for the meeting.

Stop wasting time, just book the meeting, get in, make a decision, and get out. You cannot press forward if you are sitting in meetings for hours with six team members debating ideas. Keep your meetings short, keep them focused, and get people back to work!

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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!

Being a digital marketing agency, we aim to be very active on various digital marketing platforms. In episode 251 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in to Erik as he talks about an experiment he conducted with his Twitter account.

Kevin and Erik both have an individual personal brand they are constantly trying to grow. They both support Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Our current strategy is to post two times per day on Facebook & Instagram, once on LinkedIn, and Twitter happens to be the outlier.

Not knowing how to approach twitter, Erik ran an experiment testing if he increased the number of tweets, and focused on a topic to determine if it would grow his following. Before that, he would not use a strategy, but instead, just post his thoughts. Erik decided to talk about the topic of entrepreneurialism on Twitter, and post a lot more actively using the Buffer application. This experiment has shown tremendous results, growing his following from 650 to 2,596! If you are on Twitter, be sure to check Erik out (his handle is @iamerikjolson), and get in on the conversation!

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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 once took on a project he didn't think he could succeed in, however, he took it on anyway and ended up giving back the client’s payment. In episode 250 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin explains this situation, and what he learned from it.

Back in the day, Kevin met with a potential client and went over the functions and features of the site they wanted to build. Kevin knew it would be difficult, and he worried that his team did not have the capabilities to build it. Therefore, Kevin decided to give it a shot himself.

About two months in, the demos of the site were not working properly and he came to the realization he could not complete this project. Unfortunately, the client ended up asking for the money back. Kevin speaks on how he now understands he should not have attempted this project, especially knowing that his own employees would not be able to take on the project either.

Fast forward to today, and Kevin now knows to consult his team and only pursue work that he knows would be manageable. Sometimes there are stretches and risks that should be taken, but that is only when the team feels they can deliver results. Do not take on a project you cannot do. If you see a project is going in the wrong direction, speak up right away, and point them in the right direction - you want to resolve these issues as soon as possible. There are risks that should be taken in business, but if you flat out know a project will not work, act quick, and make the right decision.

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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!