Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

Kevin made a goal this year to read 100 marketing articles. At first glance that may seem like a big number but it's pretty manageable.

A couple of mornings a week Kevin looks for marketing articles online. He will read one to three of them at a time and record it in a Google form which then puts it into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is tracking how many articles he's reading. So far he's up to 17. He is ahead of pace and should easily accomplish his goal by the end of the year.

The benefit of reading 100 marketing articles is to continue to learn more about marketing. Digital marketing is what we do at Array Digital, and there is always something new to learn in the industry. Whenever he finds something that may be useful to the team he shares it with them as well.

So think about your business, think about your goals, and see what you can do to learn more.

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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!

These days when it comes to social media there is one platform that people believe is all the rage - that is Instagram. People believe that Instagram is growing at a rapid pace and that if a business wants to be successful and reach its customers that is where they need to be. The truth is Instagram is declining in growth. Last year, in 2019, Instagram grew 6.7%. This year, it is expected to grow between 4 and 5%, and next year even less. By 2023 it is expected Instagram will only grow about 1%.

While there are many users on Instagram the numbers show us that anyone who is going to be on Instagram is most likely already there. Instagram is not growing exponentially, as some might have you think. And, within the next couple of years growth will become fairly stagnant.

By far the number one social media platform to be on in order to attract customers is still Facebook. Like Instagram, its growth is declining, but that's because an overwhelming percentage of the population is already there. It is said that if your business is not on Facebook you are losing to your competitors. That's why we choose to focus our advertising on Facebook and we do the same for our customers.

Erik's advice is to do your research. Unless your customer demographic is shown to be prevalent on Instagram, Facebook is where you want to focus your advertising when it comes to social media.

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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 set a goal to read 24 business books this year. That breaks down to two books a month. Kevin doesn't consider reading a strong point so this was a realistic and reasonable goal for him. He's a big fan of Audible (audio books). There are some books he likes to read the old-fashioned way but Audible is a great way to consume many books.

At the time of this recording it is the end of February and he has read three books. So, he's a bit behind but he's confident he will catch up. He has the next book ready to go. He is always looking for recommendations for the next book he should read. Hanging around the office he gets many recommendations from Erik and Glen and he also finds inspiration on LinkedIn.

So think about your goals, make sure they're measurable, and get out there and crush 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!

Erik is a big believer that you need to be in all places at all times, especially when it comes to your online presence. You need things like a website, a podcast, and a strong presence on social media. There are many social media platforms to choose from and it can be overwhelming. Here at Array Digital, we have a marketing team that helps support Erik's profiles, Kevin's profiles, and of course Array Digital’s.  But, Erik wanted to focus his attention on one platform in particular for his personal brand, and he chose Twitter.

In the beginning, he would post on Twitter randomly. Some days he would post one or two times and other days none at all. But, then he decided to do a little experiment. He wanted to see what would happen if he started posting 10 times a day. In a nutshell, his followers and impressions shot through the roof! 

He now gets over 100,000 impressions a month easily.  He accomplishes this posting often, sending direct messages, and engaging with his followers. And, he decided he’s going to continue doing it because he believes good things can happen on Twitter. 

Erik still likes Facebook for business purposes, but for his personal brand, Twitter is where it’s at. You can find him at @iamerikjolson.

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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 policy called open paid time off. What that means is that employees can take off as much time as they need. We don't track the hours or days that they take off at all. There is a record of it but no one actually tracks it for any purpose. Everyone is free to take as much time as they need.

We implemented this for a couple of reasons. When we stopped billing by the hour we also stopped tracking the hours that we worked. Since we were no longer tracking hours worked it also made sense to stop tracking the hours that we didn't work. Instead our work focused on client deliverables. We quickly put this new policy into place and learned a few things along the way.

First, just because we have open PTO doesn’t mean that people can come and go as they please. We still expect our employees to be working during core business hours. If you get your work done early, and you have some bandwidth, we expect that you will ask others if they need help with something since we work as a team.

Second, we implemented a leave request policy. When an employee wants to take time off they must fill out the leave request form which creates a task in our online task manager for their supervisor to review and approve it. Once it's approved it is put into the company calendar and it gets sent to Slack so everyone is aware that person is off.

Other business owners have said they would never implement something like open PTO because they are afraid their employees would abuse it. But, that has not been the case for us. On the contrary, when employees know they can take time off it helps them work more efficiently.

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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 was recently talking to a good friend of his over the phone. This friend works at a big company. A hospital to be more precise. His friend was telling him how he was trying to get time off from work to attend a conference. The friend’s boss did not approve the request stating things were too busy at work. Erik asked his friend how he put in the request for time off. The friend replied he had emailed his boss to ask for the time. Erik followed up his question by asking how he had put in the formal request, and his friend replied the email was the formal request. This really surprised Erik. He was shocked to learn that a large corporation such as a hospital would have such an informal process.

Here at Array Digital we have a much more formal process in place for requesting time off. If an employee wants to take some time they are to fill out the time-off request form. That form gets sent to their direct supervisor, who then approves the time. The approval gets put into our online task manager, which then puts it in the company calendar so everyone is aware. Although we have an open PTO policy the employee taking time off is to figure out how the work will get done in their absence. This could mean doing the work ahead of time or distributing the work to others.

It was really interesting for Erik to hear how Corporate America, who usually has strict guidelines regarding hiring and firing, can have such informal processes for things like PTO. It's definitely something to think about when putting HR processes together.

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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 have a special guest host for today's episode. His name is Jeff Kinsey but he goes by Ski or The Ski Man. Erik first met Ski in January 2019 at a conference called AlexaConf. He has done some consulting for Array Digital and he really knows his stuff.

Ski starts the episode by saying he is on his second Kia. He bought it used, as a returned lease, and as he was test-driving it he noticed there was no CD player. The saleslady told him it wasn't needed anymore because everyone just streams their music. He was taken aback. The saleslady was right and he should have known this. He's been in technology all his life. He also noticed he didn’t hear the beep to let him know to turn off the lights as he exited the car. The saleslady told him he didn’t need to - the Kia would turn them off for him.

This is what Ski calls the Kia mindset - thinking so far ahead of the curve it makes others want to know more. The beeping older cars used to make to remind you the lights were on seemed to make sense but it really didn't. It was a stop-gap solution.

What stop-gap solutions do you have in your business? It's a good idea to get the team together and compile a list of the issues you had that day, the previous day, and the day before that. You might start to see a pattern of what's holding your company back. Find the weakest link and work to turn it around.

By the way, Ski highly recommends Kias. They’re affordable, reliable cars.

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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!

On Twitter Erik gets asked a lot about venture capital. It seems to be an excuse for many would-be entrepreneurs to not start their business. There are a lot of reasons or excuses to not start a business but if you really want to have one you have to find your way around them. A lack of funds seems to be the number one reason why people don't get started. But Erik believes it’s not always needed in the beginning.

When Erik hears this reason from an aspiring entrepreneur he will publicly or privately message them and ask them if they have even tried selling their product or service. Often times the answer is no. The process of selling your product or service is known as validating your business idea. Erik believes that in the beginning this is more important than coming up with the funds to start your business.

He suggests buying cheap or used materials and equipment to get yourself started. Next, begin selling your minimum viable product. Then, sell it again. Repeat that process over and over, improving your product or service, and validating you have something to offer that others want to buy. As time goes on you may need some capital to grow your business. But, don’t let the lack of capital be the reason you don’t start.

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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!

Kevin recently stumbled across one of those flip magazines on the Internet that had really valuable data, in particular a long list of contact information for an association whose members we would love to get in front of. Each listing had the company and a person of contact with their email address and phone number.

The problem was that it wasn’t in a format that is downloadable. We wanted to get the email addresses of all of the people in there and then target them on Facebook and talk directly to them. What that meant was that we needed the data but there were 73 pages with 30-40 different contacts on each page; there was a ton of information.

Erik ended up going to Upwork.com, a website where you can put out a project you need done and freelancers will bid on it. He offered to pay $50 for this data entry project which was an absolute score for the value of this data.

Think about some of the things that you really want to do but don’t have the time to do it. See if you can outsource it to a freelancer. If you offer a reasonable sum of money, there will likely be tons of people that are willing to do the work for you.

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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’s guest host is Michael King, CEO of KFE Solutions and fellow podcaster of the show called In the Trenches.

Michael is often asked what the number one mistake is that business owners make when it comes to their finances. That's a pretty easy question for Michael to answer. He believes the biggest mistake made from the newest of entrepreneurs to CEOs of large corporations is not knowing the four most important metrics of their business. They are: revenue, gross profit, net profit, and cash.

Revenue is the total of your sales from your product or service. Most everyone knows and tracks revenue. Next is gross profit. An example is if you sold coffee cups for $1, and you bought those cups for $0.20 from your supplier. Your gross profit would be $0.80. Net profit is then your gross profit (in this case $0.80), minus overhead costs (say that is $0.30 per cup). That leaves you with a net profit of $0.50 per cup sold. These are all important numbers to know but at the end of the day the most important number is cash.

Cash is actual money in the bank. It is what pays salaries, vendors, and everything else. It is the one tangible number out of the rest. As they say, “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is King”.

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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!