Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

When Erik was in navy contracting, he had a 2-man navy contracting company named Syntactical where they did software development for the navy. Erik came up with the name, reserved the domain, and named their company.

He quickly realized that no one knew how to spell the word syntactical which is crucial for a business name. They ended up shutting down the company after 4 years. The lesson learned here was to pick a name for your company that you can communicate easily to people. When you say it, they need to be able to recognize it and be able to spell it in their head. Pick a name that’s VERY simple; the simpler, the 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.

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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!

Which is better: productivity or efficiency?

Kevin talks about a concept called ‘True Productivity’. Is productivity how many things you do or how efficiently you can do them?

Productivity is quantity. For example, how many social posts you can put out a day for multiple clients. It’s checking off a box.

Efficiency is quality. For example, you put out all those social posts but you misspelled words, put in the wrong picture, didn’t generate any engagement, etc. That is not being efficient because the quality is low.

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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!

There is a phrase you’ve probably heard: “The riches are in the niches.” What this means is that if you narrow the focus of your company, you can make more money. It seems counterintuitive because you want to service everyone. But you need to narrow your focus to a particular demographic.

Here’s an example: If you break your ankle, are you going to go to your PCP to do an X-ray and put a cast on it? No, you want to go to an orthopedic surgeon. You want a specialist to take care of this.

It’s no different here at Array Digital which is why we’ve been rethinking our business. Our clients want an agency that knows their business inside and out; they want us to already know the specific challenges they deal with.

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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 and Kevin have started a new mastermind called Array Mentors.

They are part of several different masterminds and they don’t intend to replace them with this. But instead, they intend to bring things they’ve learned from other groups but with a different focus. The focus will be on companies under $1 million in revenue and getting them over that mark. It’s for people who are dedicated and are trying to take their business to the next level.

If you are a dedicated entrepreneur, freelancer, or business owner, feel free to go to ArrayMentors.com. It’s going to be selective and limited with people who can add something to the group. There will be 2 meetings a month, a slack group, and other experiences as it continues to grow.

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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!

How in the heck did we come up with such a lofty goal of $100 million dollars within 10 years?

About 3 years ago, a moderator reminded us of how companies overestimate their accomplishments in a year but undermine their possible accomplishments in a decade.

We thought it through and talked about having more offices, having more employees, but thought... what is true success? The biggest metric of success that's unfakeable is revenue!

We calculated about $40 Million in 10 years, realistically, but why make goals that are easily obtainable? If you set your goals high, you'll work a little harder to get there.

Learn why we've stuck with the ridiculous number and how we use it to drive our business in today's episode.

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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 opened a second agency from scratch: Rival Digital. It’s so new that the website hasn’t even been established but they’ve hired two employees and started prospecting already.

But why did they start another one?

Well, Array Digital, their primary agency, has been around for a while developed from work that both Kevin and Erik had done for years before merging to form Array Digital. They’ve gained so much knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work including niching, which we’ve done recently. But, at Array Digital, niching is risky because we’ve got a lot of good things going on. We’re more of a full-service digital marketing agency and we haven’t really niched.

Erik and Kevin wanted to niche very narrowly so that’s why they started Rival Digital to be a digital marketing agency for residential HVAC companies and only on that.

More info on Rival Digital, our marketing agency that focus exclusively on HVAC marketing, at https://rivaldigital.com.

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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!

Up until about six months ago we were willing to do digital marketing for just about any established business that needed it. When Covid hit we started to rethink that. We lost our biggest client, who was a retailer. It hurt. That's when we started to look at the different industries that we serve and we noticed some are more recession-proof than others, and we do really well for those industries.

The industries we’re talking about are law, medical and home service industries. While some marketing agencies focus on specific niches, we are not there - yet. The pandemic forced us to narrow down the segments we serve, and it’s been really good for us and our 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!

Recently Kevin interviewed Stephanie Messas, a lawyer based in New York City but originally from France. She helps French businesses do business in the United States.

One way Stephanie saw success during the pandemic was by having everything digitalized. Everything she works on is in the cloud. She prides herself on being a business partner to her clients which means she had to be very good at communicating with them. The modernized law firm format sets her apart from her competitors.

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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!

There’s a big debate whether every single client should pay the same amount for the services rendered. In this episode, Erik summarizes the two biggest philosophies out there regarding the two sides of this debate.

The first side is: yes, everyone should pay the same amount. If one client finds out they’re paying more than another, they’ll be mad. But what happens if you raise your price for new clients? Do you raise your price for old clients as well? If you do, you’re going to have some issues that you’ll have to deal with.

Another option is to change the price for the client based on some factor that you objectively or subjectively set in advance? Many people say you should base your price on the value you deliver to the client which varies based on the client’s situation.

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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!

There are two big categories of salespeople: hunters and farmers. The difference between them is how they go about getting prospects and turning them into clients.

A hunter is a salesperson that goes out and meets people and very quickly tries to convert them into a prospect. They offer value quickly so they can start to talk business and get them into the pipeline. They’re actively going out, actively getting business, and actively trying to close them.

A farmer is pretty much the opposite. A farmer may start a podcast, interact with people on social media, go to events to network, but they don’t press too hard when it comes to converting someone into a prospect. They are more so invested in business development and doing things to bring awareness to your business. It’s a longer process, takes a long time to pick up speed, but it is still a completely valid sales strategy.

We’re looking for hunters.

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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!