Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Erik recently recorded a great episode and his microphone ended up being muted. He went live on all his social media platforms and the whole time people were trying to tell him that they couldn’t hear him. But of course, he wasn’t checking the comments because he was focusing on what he was saying.

This podcast is all about telling you about our journey, our entire journey, the good, the bad, the ugly. Well this was the ugly. Erik was engaging with his audience and yet, in actuality, he really wasn’t because he was not even listening and reading their comments that told him his mic was muted.

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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 recently listened to an audiobook called You Can’t Hurt Me. Throughout the author’s journey, he used a concept called the accountability mirror where he would look in the mirror and the only person he was accountable to was himself. He reminded himself of the promises he made to himself and it was his way of keeping himself truthful to his goals.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, everything that you need to accomplish is within your power as long as you hold yourself accountable. Bet on the man or woman in the mirror.

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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!

Here at Array Digital we have minimum commitment for our client agreements. Our agreements are legally binding contracts but we like to call them agreements because we think it sounds less harsh. Our minimum commitment is 12 months. Sometimes a client will ask for a shorter commitment term. We will consider it, depending on the size of the deal, the scope of work we will do for them, and the size of their company. When we can't get 12 months we ask for a 9 month commitment. If that's still too much we will go down to 6 months, but no less. We want to be in it for the long haul, and we want to ensure we have enough time to produce the results they’re looking for.

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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 recalls something his father recently reminded him of. He talked with Kevin about the very first home he rented with Kevin's mom when they were newlyweds. It was his grandmother's house and it cost him $50 a month. Even though he was renting from Grandma she was a force to be reckoned with. It didn't matter if you were family, rent was due in full and on time.

One thing grandma told Kevin's dad back then was, “If you can’t pay one month, you can’t pay two”. Meaning if he couldn't pay rent on time that month what made him think he would be able to pay double the following month? It was a lesson that Kevin's dad learned early on and passed on to Kevin when he was young.

In business, when clients have a hard time paying their invoices for one, two, and three months, it is likely those problems will continue and they will compound. It’s usually a good idea to recognize when that happens to work something out with the client before it becomes a bigger problem.

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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 have a lot of written processes. Process is important to us because we’ve seen what happens when we rely on memory or someone doesn’t know the process.

Sometimes team members will ask for an exception to a process. If this happens more than once it’s a good idea to question if that exception should become the norm. If so, it should be documented and then the team should be trained on the changes.

One way Erik has found useful to do this is by making the changes to the written process in “suggestion mode” in Google Docs. This shows the parts that were eliminated and what was added. He then shares that with the team member(s) that need to know about the changes.

Another way is to make those same changes and then record a short video about it using Vidyard, explaining the changes to the team.

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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 see a lot of websites as website design and optimization are some of the services we offer. Time and time again we come across websites that are not really optimized for mobile viewing. We often see page load times of six and 10 seconds, or even longer. That's a long time for a page to load and it can be enough to detract potential customers from navigating your site.

Business owners often think that as long as they have a responsive website that also loads on mobile devices that it’s good enough, but it’s not. Sixty to Seventy percent of website visitors now come from mobile devices. Your site needs to really be optimized for a mobile experience - it needs to load quickly, and there should be clear call-to-actions like contact forms or “call now” buttons that are easily accessed with the touch of a button.

Two good websites to use to check your mobile responsiveness are testmysite.com and pagespeedinsights.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.

—

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's been said that only 4% of businesses reach the point of making $1million a year in revenue. There is no doubt that getting to that point is very hard; in fact it took Erik and Kevin several years of being in business before they reached that point. Forty-five percent of businesses fail within the first five years, and that number increases as the years go up.

Reaching $1million a year in revenue is achievable, but it takes a lot of hard work. You have to really work on the business, continually improve on processes, and never give up. The rewards are worth the hard work. So buckle down and join the 4% 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.

—

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!

Today Erik interview Daniel Elliot, a lawyer who focuses on the rail and logistics industry, and he will enlighten you on how he’s growing his law practice.

Daniel cultivates online prospects online and through his network. He does online networking the right way. He has 14,000 connections on LinkedIn which has led to a lot of his clients. Most people don’t think about their network until they need their network but Daniel saw what he’d need for his future law practice and created it before he needed it. Gaining most of these followers was blind; the majority of people he didn’t know.

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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 recorded this podcast episode at the Array Digital office, which is in Chesapeake, Virginia. This was only his second time in the office since COVID hit five months ago. It's been very strange going from working in the office every day to working exclusively from home. It was even more strange for him to go into the office to record this episode as he has gotten used to working from home lately.

COVID really changed the way Erik sees work. He now sees that it's very possible to work completely from home. However, there are advantages to keeping the office, and so we will. As a small business it gives us some credibility and a central place to work peacefully, without the distractions of home. It's been eye-opening though to see there can be a balance between both.

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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 are finally at the point where we would like to break down our profit and loss by department. For years Erik controlled all of the finances and budgets, and didn’t share much with others, until Katya came along. She started bookkeeping and helping with the finances. A couple of years later Erik decided to implement practices from the book Profit First for budgeting purposes. That has been working out pretty well but we're at a new point now.

Erik is now really interested to know what our profit and loss looks like at a departmental level. Our departments consist of Sales, Operations, Customer Support, and Admin, but they can be broken down even further. Erik has tasked Katya with starting to track all expenses, revenue, and even labor by department. The point is to figure out how much money each of our services brings in and how much we spend per service to come up with departmental budgets and goals for the future.

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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!