Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

With the start of the new year comes the time to set new goals and resolutions.

Something Kevin did was planning them at the end of December, developing a system to track them every single day, and journaling throughout the day to update those goals. But he doesn’t stop there: he has another goal tracking spreadsheet as well.

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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 and Erik recently created an initiative called the Founders Club where once a year they will select a few team members from Array Digital and take them on an all-expenses-paid trip. In order to get into the Founders Club, they have to hit a few criteria: If they are a salesperson, they have to hit at least 105% of their annual sales quota, which is $5,000 of monthly recurring revenue. If they are not a salesperson, they have to have been at the company for 5 years and every 2 years thereafter.

This is a good way for them to recognize people who have done more than expected or have been with the company for a long time. December 2020 was the first time this was announced.

In early January, we found out that Jamal’s 5-year anniversary was not actually in December but in January. He had been announced as part of the Founders Club. This led to a debate about when someone’s official start date should be because Jamal actually started as an intern then became a full-time employee in early January of 2016.

Congratulations to Jamal, Katya, Glen, and Jason for making it into the inaugural class of Founders Club!

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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!

Around May of 2020, we were awarded with our regional chambers’ small business of the year for Chesapeake. It means a lot to us and we fought hard to win this; it was not something that came easily. Kevin nominated us for 3 years.

This isn’t an award that you vote for; it’s all based on financials, business strategy, company culture, growth, taxes, they look at everything. Applying is an extensive process but persistence paid off.

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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 has been journaling his goals every day but there’s no use having goals if you can’t track them. There are tons of free apps to track your goals but Kevin finds it easier to track them manually.

He uses a form and spreadsheet with Google Forms where you can add your own fields. Kevin has year-long goals like going to the gym for 180 days this year.

When you make a Google Form, there’s an option that allows you to connect the form to a spreadsheet. He was able to then clean that spreadsheet up and pin it to his browser so that he can check his progress every day.

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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 the last year and a half or so, we’ve been going live on social media pretty much every Friday where we invite guests from our local community to chat about different topics. It’s been interesting but we decided to drop it because we realized we expend an awful lot of effort and time creating general brand awareness.

With general brand awareness, you’re getting your name out to the general public. We’ve generated a lot of business because of that but we’ve recently segmented into 3 more narrow industries. We realized that we need to be spending more time on brand awareness within our niche industries. We’re going to shift from general brand awareness to more targeted brand awareness.

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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!

These are the takeaways from the Hiring and Firing chapter of Erik’s upcoming book Million Dollar Journey.

#1: You can only scale so much as a solopreneur. In order to grow your business, you are going to need to hire people.

#2: Hiring is a huge responsibility. As the employer, you become responsible for your employees’ financial wellbeing and their careers.

#3: Create a sense of team.

#4: Provide learning opportunities for your employees.

#5: If an employee is not a fit, be honest. Let them know early and often about their concerns. Don’t let them be surprised that you are going to fire 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!

The first way Erik invested in education for his employees was by buying them books in addition to taking the whole company on a trip to a conference. At the time, Erik just assumed everyone else would love this because this was how he learned best. And from a company cultural standpoint, it was great; they hung out and ate together a lot. But people came back not having taken much away from an educational point of view.

He realized that's not the best way to educate his employees. So he asked them what is. Some people said they like to watch videos, others learn best by doing projects, others by hearing it from other people. Everyone had a different learning style.

So he decided to create individual learning plans for each person. That worked well for a while.

But once Kevin and Erik merged, they got away from that and didn't have a learning plan in place until very recently.

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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!

Unless you want generic clients, stop attending generic networking events.

In the last few months at Array Digital and even more so at our sister company, Rival Digital, we have been focusing more and more on niche segments. At Array, we recently selected 3 segments we’re going to focus on. Over at Rival, it’s a lot more focused just on residential HVAC contractors. For each one, we have a very specific group of people we want to get in front of.

In the past, we were part of a lot of generic business groups; basically, if you were in business and you wanted to meet people, Kevin and Erik were there. They’d spend time and money to get a membership because it’s great for general brand awareness. But now, we are no longer concerned about trying to reach everyone.

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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 has recently gotten a lot of email communications from companies he, frankly, forgot about. These companies are waiting for a sales opportunity and right around the holidays is the perfect time. He was getting flooded with email newsletters that he never signed up for and he unsubscribes.

Here at Array Digital, we have an email newsletter, but we don’t just add people whenever they have some sort of transaction with us. We have a double opt-in so we know that the people we send our newsletters to really want 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!

Late 2019 Erik bought himself a carbon fiber bike to train for his Half Ironman in 2020. It served him well until very recently when he was involved in an accident and the bike was destroyed.

He contacted a company called Broken Carbon, based in Colorado, to ask if his bike could be repaired. He sent them pictures of his bike and shortly after he received their response. They were honest and told him his bike was beyond repair. He appreciated their honesty and their follow-up email. They told him he could turn the bike into something new, and sent him a picture of half a bike frame they had turned into a lamp. It was clearly a joke and Erik thought it was hilarious.

Humor, when used appropriately, can improve a customer service experience. It humanizes the interaction. You just have to know when to use it.

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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!