Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Soon after the merger between the two companies that formed Array Digital, Erik tried really hard to put together the first management team. He wanted to loosen the reins a bit and let others help make decisions for the business. Until this point all decisions fell on him and Kevin and he wanted to lighten his load. He hired someone he thought would help him with this, he gave them what he thought was a suitable title, but it didn't quite work out the way he expected.

Issues came up and that person ended up leaving soon after. Erik and Kevin were back to being the main decision-makers. Luckily a couple of our existing team members stepped up to the plate and asked for more responsibilities. It was a great fit and a natural flow to how we operate.

We have since added another person to the management team and it's been working out nicely. Erik and Kevin no longer have to make every big decision by themselves. It's made things much easier and as we see now, it's imperative in order to scale the business.

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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!

Recently Erik sat down to watch a recorded new employee orientation between Katya and our newest employee, James. Katya works remotely from Florida and James works from North Carolina. He is the second employee we have hired without ever meeting in person. Because of COVID we have had to do things a little differently, and that is likely to continue.

Erik asked Katya to record the orientation, which she conducts over Google Meet. Google Meet is one of many virtual meeting applications, but the one we use the most for ourselves. Katya came up with the idea of conducting these orientations a couple of years ago as we started to hire more employees, but Erik had never actually seen or heard what takes place during these orientations so he thought he’d check it out.

He was happy to see she covered all the important points like company culture, benefits, pay, and what to expect working with the team. It’s an important part of the onboarding process and we will continue to do it.

It’s possible and even easy to do things like hire people remotely and conduct online orientation.

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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!

Many years ago, Erik made an agreement that ended up killing his old company. The agreement was an exclusivity clause and it really came back to bite him.

Fast forward another 10 years or so to where we are today: Erik has developed an aversion to exclusivity. Basically this is a client asking you to reserve your services just for them. There’s different ways to define exclusivity but the problem is you’re locking yourself into this agreement and locking yourself out of other opportunities.

Any time a client asks for exclusivity, I generally tell the client that we don’t do that. But there may be situations where you do want to agree to exclusivity.

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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!

Mental health is tough to guard these days, especially working in social media. Our Social Media Manager Shannon touches on the tough topics flooding our feeds & gives advice on how can we not be drowned by the darkness while still staying informed.

Here's her tips:

1) Don’t check your phone in the AM & set a screen limit - create pockets in your day where you don't look at your phone, and don't start your day with scrolling through the feeds.

2) Daily routines - Instead of turning to your phone right when you wake up, do something to set your mind right first thing when you wake up.

3) Keep your phone away from you while working - If everything is accessible on your computer & you're able, keep your phone a few feet away or even in another room if you have no important phone calls potentially coming through.

4) Extensions to block distractions - It's easy to get lost in the scroll from time-to-time, even in a regular news cycle. Shannon's favorite distraction-blocker is News Feed Eradicator for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en

5) Focus on the positives - There’s always going to be bad news of course, but there’s good news, too.

So if you’re working in social media like Shannon, remember when to stop working! Keep pockets of your day screen-free, don’t get lost in the scroll, and be optimistic.

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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 recently hired two brand new employees who we never actually met in person. It’s something we’ve never done before and Erik wasn’t really sure if or how it would work out.

When COVID started, we needed to hire someone but it wasn’t possible to meet in person and especially not in a group like we normally do. But we did it entirely over the Internet.

It’s something new to us but it’s something that has worked out extremely well for us. Both of these employees are crushing it and it made us realize that we don’t need to see our new hires face-to-face in order to interview, hire, and train 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!

In the early business days Erik used to bill by the hour. Then he moved onto project work but that had its downfalls too. Years later Erik and Kevin got a taste for recurring revenue. That's when they realized that's what they wanted from that point forward.

Recurring revenue is money that we know we can count on from a client, month after month, unless or until they end services with us. When we sell services to a new client we promote the idea that we are going to provide these services on a continuous basis. There is a minimum time commitment involved, but otherwise the services, and therefore the payments, continue.

If a new client asks for a shorter-term or they want to put an end date on the contract, we don't count that as recurring revenue. That is what’s known as re-occuring revenue. We want recurring revenue (as in no end date).

One way to get more of the type of revenue that we want is to incentivize our salespeople to sell recurring services by lowering the commission on any contract that has an end date on it. If it's not the type of work we want it is reasonable to do this.

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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!

Sometimes to get experience, you have to make it! Just take it from our Social Media Manager Shannon, who Erik found and hired through her own projects. 

If you’re someone in their mid 20’s worried about not having an adult job yet, don’t stress! Shannon was really nervous when she started at Array Digital about a year ago. Three years out of college and still working at a coffee shop, she applied to jobs to no avail.

Right after college Shannon didn’t have any prospects, so she figured she'd make her own experience. With the encouragement & help from a couple friends, she grew a Tumblr page she started during college into a professional music blog with a domain at popscuremedia.com & writing for free on altdaily.org (RIP). It got her freelance writing work, but she wanted a salary, benefits - an "adult job."

So she beefed up Popscure - threw events to get folks to know the blog, reached out to artists to interview and cross-promote, and got writers on board to jump-start their careers. It cost more than she made, and it didn’t pay off for a while - until it did.

Erik reached out to her and said someone passed him Shannon's resume - to this day neither of them knows who, but that’s neither here nor there. 

The moral is, she put in work towards something she was passionate about and even though it was dismissed a lot, it eventually paid off. More importantly, she didn’t wait for an opportunity to come to her - she made her own self-worth.

So if you’re wanting to find a starting point in your career, do it yourself! Start a platform positioning yourself as an expert, and practice for the career you want.

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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!

Just one year ago, we hired our first salesperson, Glen. Then about a month ago, we hired our second salesperson, Francesca. We went quickly from having no sales team to having a (albeit small) sales team.

We’ve decided we’re going to hire another digital sales specialist. Already, Francesca has closed her first deal and has several more deals on the way.

A lot of marketing companies have hunkered down because of COVID and have gone on the defensive. We decided very quickly into the pandemic, however, that we were going to go on offense.

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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 at least 3 months into COVID and the shutdown that’s gone along with it and one of the things we’re struggling with is what to do with our office. We’re not so sure that we actually need it. We have employees in 4 different states now and we’ve been communicating with our staff so effectively without seeing each other in-person.

We’ve hired new people, brought on new clients, expanded with old clients. We’ve had great operations this whole time. I don’t think there’s a downside to working remotely and there’s many benefits over working in the office.

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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 a while now, we’ve put our clients on different levels of priority and we’ve recently started discussing whether we should change it.

Right now, we have priority 1, 2, and 3 purely based on revenue. Of course, we take care of every client but the reality is that in order for us to essentially be on retainer for a client and for them to have full access to us, they have to be on a particular level of spending with us.

Our goal is to also move those priorities up because we are outgrowing some of our smaller clients and eventually we might only have priority 1 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!