Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

We are fairly new to the sales game in terms of having a dedicated sales team. For the first couple of years of Array Digital’s existence it was just Erik and Kevin selling our services. We brought on our first real salesperson, Glen, a little less than a year-and-a-half ago. When we did that we implemented some new policies and a sales quota.

Our salespeople are expected to bring in $5,000 a month of recurring monthly revenue. All services that we sell are on a monthly recurring basis, so we expect that our sales team bring in new deals totaling $5,000 a month, every month. We do have a ramp-up period of four months. That means that after a couple of weeks of training they are expected to bring in 25% of their quota in their first month. The second month they are expected to bring in 50%. The third month 75%. It's not until their fourth month that they are expected to bring in 100% of their $5,000 quota.

We pay our salespeople a salary plus commission on their sales for the life of the account. And, so far these practices have worked very well for us and our sales 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.

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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!

We are in the process of trying to hire two new people - a salesperson and an SEO Specialist.

Our hiring process has multiple steps. The first step is a 15 minute skills assessment over the phone by the hiring manager. The next step is a longer interview with the hiring manager, who may or may not ask others from the team to join in. After the first couple of interviews are conducted the top three candidates go on to interview with our founders - Erik and Kevin. The founders interview is really a chance for Erik and Kevin to see if there is a cultural fit. They look at things like personality, work ethic, and overall likeness. At this point the team has already determined they have the skills to do the job. This final interview is to determine whether the candidate is a “Hell yes!” or a no. We've learned in the past that if a candidate isn't a “Hell yes!” they should probably be a no.

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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 frequently talks about the concept of asking for what you want. When it comes to careers, your personal life, business decisions, and everything in between, it's important to make your needs and wants known. You never really know what you can accomplish unless you ask.

We make a lot of purchases on the American Express card because we use it to pay for all of our advertising. When it came to paying the bill Erik had to find ways to work around the daily payment limit. Sometimes he would make multiple payments, and sometimes he would pay it over the course of a couple of days. He decided to call his banker and ask if it would be possible to increase the daily payment limit, and he was happy to hear that it was - all he had to do was fill out a form. He has made other requests from vendors that we work with, and often those have worked out too.

You never know what can be done if you don’t 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.

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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 is a big believer that if you don't ask for what you want there's a good chance you won't get it. When it comes to sales, promotions, jobs, and frankly, many other things in life, it is important to have the confidence to ask for the things you want. Most people are not mind readers, and it's unfair to expect them to know what you want or what's important to you.

A good example is our Creative Director, Jake. He was hired at Array Digital as our Digital Marketing Manager, and within the first couple of years he started to ask for more responsibility within the company. It took about another year for him to really be ready for the role of Creative Director, but he earned it. If he had never asked, Erik might never have known that he wanted that role.

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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!

G Suite - The business version of Gmail

Cloud-based email, document, spreadsheet, and folders

Makes it very easy to collaborate on sheets and documents as a team

Slack

For internal communication

Easier and faster than emailing or calling

Asana

Online task tracking

Makes tasking visible and traceable

Vidyard

For recording video of yourself and adding it to foreground of a presentation

Great for sales presentations and how-to videos

Audacity

For podcast mixing

Adding intro and outro music

Calendly

For scheduling calls or meetings

Sends link to the recipient with your availability, cutting down on back and forth

Social media

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn for business development

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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!

Two questions that Erik often gets asked by new entrepreneurs is whether they should hire employees and if now is the right time.

In order to really grow your business you will eventually want to hire employees. Employees bring different skill sets to the table and allow you to grow the business while they do the work of the business. It's hard to provide a recurring service or product over and over without help and try to grow your business at the same time. Eventually you're going to want that help.

Erik believes the right time to hire your first employee is when you have too much work to do on your own and you have enough money in the bank to pay that employee comfortably for at least 3 to 6 months. Keep in mind that hiring someone means paying wages, and possibly taxes and benefits if they’re brought on as an employee and not a contractor.

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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!

One of the things Erik has tried hard to avoid here at Array Digital is for us or any of our offerings to become a commodity. A commodity is something you could buy pretty much from anywhere and the customer doesn’t care where they buy it from.

There are services that we could offer here that a lot of other TV stations, radio stations, digital marketing agencies, etc. will offer their clients that are straight up commodities. For example, display advertising which is where you go on the Internet and see a pop-up ad. You can buy this from literally any company and granted they’ll all give you reasons why you should buy it from them but it’ll pretty much always be the same.

If the client could just buy it from the original source that we’d be getting it from, why wouldn’t they just buy it themselves? We have to bring something else to the table.

If you are a commodity, then your customers or clients could get this thing from anywhere. Why would you want to build a business around an offering that you don’t add any value to? You want to build your business on things that you have specialized, that they can’t just get from someone else.

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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!

When was the last time you took a look at your Google My Business? This is the business listing that has reviews, your phone number, map, and general business information. Most people set this up and forget about it or look at the reviews and that’s it.

Most companies we see don’t even realize they have it or think they don’t have control over it. But you need to embrace and optimize this listing, investing time and energy into it. There are several things you should look at when it comes to your Google My Business:

Add posts of images and content on a weekly basis

Respond to reviews both positive and negative

Make sure all of the business information is accurate

Add FAQs on the front end (at least 5)

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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!

A few weeks ago, we made a really big change here. In the past, we worked with any client in any industry because 1) it was really easy to work with whoever came to us, and 2) we never had any issue with it. But as we worked with clients in different industries, we kept struggling with how to learn them.

After digging into our financials, we realized 55% of our income fell into 3 industries: law, medical, and home services. We’ve reworked our marketing to surround those 3 industries and we’ve noticed we’re getting a lot of referrals to people in those 3 segments. What’s happened is that by us saying that we focus on these segments, it’s given people a lot more clarity about what we do and specialize in. It’s so much easier for people to filter their contacts down to the kinds of people we want to work with. It has led to really good referrals straight from the people in our immediate contacts.

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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 5-6 months, Erik has been working from home probably like you and probably in what would be considered “inappropriate business attire.” He realized quickly that even jeans became uncomfortable.

But as the weeks turned into months and months turned into almost half a year, Erik really hasn’t changed those habits too much except now, instead of sweatpants, he’s wearing shorts everyday. His friend, Zach Miller (@ZachMillerSays), asked him on his Instagram live, “How do you figure out what to wear on a day-to-day basis?”

During COVID, it’s pretty easy; there’s no reason to get dressed up.

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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!