Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Every so often we find we have to update our marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to events we put on. An example is the monthly marketers meeting we used to host called Marketers Anonymous. This was a marketers networking event we used to host during lunch at a bar and grill in Norfolk, Virginia. It started off as us speaking at the events every month. Then it changed to us inviting speakers (mainly other marketers) to speak to our guests. At some point we realized we weren’t getting any business out of these so we had a meeting to discuss how we could get more out of it. That’s when we decided to start inviting speakers whose message could help get us in front of our ideal prospects. It was a win-win.

Unfortunately COVID hit and we had to cancel our monthly in-person meetings. We turned our attention to our Lunchtime Livestream, which is a livestream we put on once a week on Fridays. We went through a similar learning process. We started off speaking on our livestreams ourselves, then we invited others to co-host the show, with similar results as before. Now we are more strategic on who we invite on the show and the messaging we put out there. Sometimes you just have to tweak your strategy and your message.

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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!

One of Erik’s 2020 new year’s resolution was publishing a book on how he grew the company from nothing to $1 million in revenue which doesn’t happen for nearly 96% of businesses. It took 8 years and a lot of lessons learned along the way and Erik wants to help other entrepreneurs to learn how to avoid the mistakes people commonly make when starting a business.

The book has been written for over 6 months and now he needs an editor to reorganize the book and make sure there are no typos. He’s decided to hire his own book editor. He had to do some research because there are so many different specializations within the editing segment of the industry.

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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!

For man years now, we’ve done a company lunch dating back to before Array Digital even existed. At the time Erik started this, he was trying to do a staff augmentation program but discovered he didn’t like that business model partially because he felt so disconnected from his employees.

One of the things he decided to do was get everyone together for company lunch to reconnect with everyone face to face every 2 weeks. And it stuck and has continue to this day.

But now we’re in the middle of COVID, the office is closed down, and everyone is working remotely. Erik decided to have a virtual company lunch and we get together through a video call and we sit there and eat in each other’s presence.

It may sound weird but it’s fun and an opportunity for everyone to just chill out during the course of the 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.

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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 has been quite a bit of unrest among the civilian population. We’re still in the first wave of COVID and that has greatly affected everyone and we’re all realizing that we’re in this for the long haul. But there are also the events that have happened as a result of the murder of George Floyd and many other black people at the hands of the police.

As a business, how can you properly address civil unrest while still being true to your business and getting the marketing message out?

It’s a hard thing for anyone to understand if it’s even the place of a business to comment on events like these. But some of the events that have happened are just so profound that it’s ridiculous to ignore them and just continue with your own messaging. These are significant events in our country and if you’re not at least commenting on them, you are not in tune with what’s going on in the world.

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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!

It’s often easy to start something, but it's much harder to maintain it.

At Array digital we often come up with great ideas for new things we want to try. We tend to start off with a bang then slowly lose momentum as the novelty of it starts to wear off. One example is our Friday Lunchtime Liivestream. When the staff first came up with the idea we were all excited at this new thing we would be doing. After a while it became work, and took effort. It slowly became an Erik and Kevin Livestream, with us having to book speakers to join us, when initially the team was hosting most of the Livestreams.

It happens. The excitement of new ideas wears off over time. This podcast is another example. We are a year-and-a-half into this, and it’s work. Erik is recording 10 episodes today, as is Kevin, because we're running low on episodes. But, it’s something we believe in, and we want to continue doing it, so we have to have the fortitude to keep it going.

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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!

Whether you’re a freelancer or a huge business, start saying no to project work. It’s hard to not take on project work but what we’ve done at Array Digital is gone from 100% project work to 100% recurring. It’s been a life-changing experience.

Every time you take on a project, it’ll set you back. We had to quit cold turkey in order to make it work with monthly recurring revenue. Think about ways you can build everything into your pricing and start charging a certain amount monthly.

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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!

A podcast is audio-only but it’s easy to record the video and use that on social media to double the amount of content you are creating. For a while, we were promoting audiograms on social media where we would use the audio from our podcast with show notes as the caption and put them on our various social media platforms. This did not resonate with our audience and it would get very little engagement.

So instead, Erik has started recording on video and audio.

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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’ve finally locked in and chosen a few industry segments that we’re focusing on. We are not niching but we have a few segments that are our best clients, that we understand, that also fit our model. You have to choose industries that work well with you versus changing every time for every different client.

We’ve narrowed down to home services (remodelers, HVAC, plumbers, landscaping, etc.), medical (we have a large medical operation locally with about 30+ offices and 75+ providers), and law. That’s all we’re going to focus on as far as our sales and marketing are concerned. Of course, we’ll get leads outside of those segments and we’ll accept the ones that work well with your business model.

Think about the segments that work best for you, that conform to your structure and billing and contracts and make sure they’re the ones you go after. That’s going to increase your growth potential

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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!

One thing that has helped our cash flow tremendously is the fact that we bill and get paid in advance. It took a long time to get to this point in our business but once we made the shift we noticed immediate benefits.

Many service Industries bill in arrears, meaning they bill after work has been completed. Contractors will often take a deposit and payments after completing milestones, and their final bill will come sometime after all work is complete. Then, if they have payment terms of 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, or even 90, they often have to wait weeks, if not months, to get paid.

Most of our clients are on auto-pay, meaning we draft their account or charge their credit card automatically every month. There are a few that pay us by check, but if they do our payment terms are seven days. Sometimes prospects will question that, but overall it works for us and helps us get paid faster.

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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 love ACH!

ACH Stands for Automated Clearing House. It’s essentially a transfer from one bank account to another. It is our preferred way for clients to pay us. We used to accept many forms of payments, but in the last two years we moved to ACH and we love it. We get paid faster, there is less admin work, and there are minimal fees.

We use Quickbooks to set up ACH payments and bill clients. It's a simple process that requires you to connect your bank account to Quickbooks one time. Then, when you want to get a client on ACH you ask for your client’s account information to make the transfers. QuickBooks does all the work by drafting the client’s bank account every month and sends them a sales receipt for their records. It’s a win-win.

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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!