Journey to $100 Million
Accelerate your entrepreneurial journey by learning from our mistakes instead of making them yourself. Join Erik J. Olson and Kevin Daisey, the founders of Array Digital, through their ups and downs and lessons learned as they grow their digital marketing agency to $100 million in revenue. In each daily episode they'll discuss what's working now, and what's not. They'll share entrepreneurial and marketing tips and tricks picked up while becoming a dominant player in the ever changing digital marketing industry.
Episodes
August 12, 2020 • 4 min
One of the things Erik learned early on in his entrepreneurial journey was that he has to sell something people actually want to buy. If you are building a business, it needs to have an offering that is so easy for anyone to grasp that you don’t have to spend a ton of time explaining it. If it takes more than 10 seconds to say what you do, you will probably lose that opportunity. An offering should be super simple.
What can you se...
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Mark as Played
August 11, 2020 • 3 min
If you’ve ever had someone badmouth one of your employees, you have to very quickly make sure you don’t allow that to happen. This can come from your management, other employees, maybe even your clients. Everyone makes mistakes but we also take a lot of preventative measures to make sure those mistakes we make never happens again.
We are a learning organization and we fix our process to make sure things like this don’t happen eve...
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August 10, 2020 • 4 min
Overtime, we change our prices, adjust our services, and add different services all based on the strategy that we’ve created for our individual clients. But when do we reprice an existing client?
If a client is going to continue services with us and want to sign a new contract, we don’t reprice them. They keep the same pricing they had with a new scope of work even if we’ve updated our pricing strategy.
If someone wants to remo...
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August 9, 2020 • 3 min
We’re all in such a rush these days that sometimes we even force ourselves to press on through even when we have nothing left in us. Every once in a while, it’s ok to take a break.
Recently, Erik took a break in his training for his half marathon. He was on a 1 hour and 45 minute run but found that 30 minutes in, he needed to take a break, walk, drink some Gatorade, etc. After about 2 minutes of walking, he started running again ...
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August 8, 2020 • 4 min
Make the most of LinkedIn by setting daily tasks.
Kevin does this because LinkedIn is challenging and you need to be working beyond your profile to grow your engagement, connections, followers, and potential for sales.
#1: Anyone that accepts Kevin’s connection requests, he makes a task to send them a message. The message is basic and general, just a simple introduction that’s short and not salesy.
#2: Once they respond back, K...
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August 7, 2020 • 5 min
Erik recently found himself needing to send out quite a bit of information to members of an organization he's a part of. He tried to think of the best way to do this. He could have sent one very long email, but he decided against that because he didn't want to bombard the readers with all that information at once. He then thought about sending a series of emails, but similarly, he didn't think they would want to b...
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August 6, 2020 • 3 min
There should be very very few exceptions to policies. If you take the time to create a policy it's because you saw the need to create it and therefore it should be followed 99% of the time. If a policy is only being followed sometimes it becomes a guideline, not a policy. If a policy is being questioned time and time again, by your team or your clients, then it's worth re-evaluating to see if it's valid. If it’s ...
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August 5, 2020 • 5 min
Erik was recently asked on Twitter by TechnoTim, what the status was of writing his first book. If you've listened to the podcast earlier in the year you may have heard Erik talking about writing and publishing his first book. It was one of his New Year's resolutions for 2020.
Erik started by writing between 1,000 to 3,000 words every morning in December of 2019. His plan was to write the first draft in a month, t...
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August 4, 2020 • 4 min
Referrals are a great way to get new business. We are always very thankful when someone refers us to someone else. It’s typically easier to close a deal when it starts with a referral and it’s often a good fit. It’s also a great way to start a new working relationship because there's already a small sense of trust.
It's not only nice to get referrals, it's great to refer others. We have a long list of clients ...
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August 3, 2020 • 4 min
What would you do if you found out one of your competitors was advertising using your brand on Google?
We recently ran into this very issue. We did a search for our company name, Array Digital, and were very surprised to find our picture next to one of our competitor’s ads. This stirred up some conversation within our company about what we should do. Do we address it? Do we go to them and ask them what's going on?
Erik...
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August 2, 2020 • 4 min
We are a pretty small company with a pretty simple org chart. We're growing, but as a team of 14 we're still pretty small and the way the company is structured is straightforward. At the top we have Erik and Kevin. Erik is the CEO and oversees all of operations. Kevin is the CMO and oversees the sales department. Below that we have Glen, who’s our Sales Manager, Jamal, who oversees the web design team, and Jake, who...
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August 1, 2020 • 3 min
We recently updated our mission statement to align with our new goals. Initially our mission statement was to dominate digital marketing in Hampton Roads. That served us well the last couple of years, but we feel we have outgrown it. Our new mission statement is to dominate digital marketing for our clients in the medical, law, and home service industries. That’s what we do the best in, and that's where our focus has mo...
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July 31, 2020 • 5 min
When you're first starting out in business it's common to take on all kinds of work. If someone requests your services it's very tempting to not turn work away even if it's something that you don't do or you're not interested in doing. You'll figure out a way to get it done because you're trying to grow, you need money to pay the bills, and something seems better than nothing.
Erik did this a lo...
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July 30, 2020 • 5 min
We have a fairly rigorous hiring process at Array Digital. It breaks down into the following six steps:
1. Figure out what we need
We have to figure out what we need so we know who we need to hire. We then create the job ad and post it on Indeed, our website, and our social networks.
2. Screenings
After we get applications, we send out some screening questions. Depending on the answers to those questions we will then set up a ...
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July 29, 2020 • 3 min
Millennials make up a big part of the workforce and they’re a force to be reckoned with. Here at Array Digital we have several Millennials on the team. Jake Maines, our Creative Director, is one of them. He’s been with us over three years and he’s an integral part of the company.
We submitted Jake as a “Millenial on the Move” to our local business magazine, CoVA Biz. That stands for Coastal Virginia Business. We were thrill...
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July 28, 2020 • 4 min
What is better than one big piece of content? Micro content.
When you create content for your company or brand there are numerous opportunities to turn that into lots of micro content. What we mean by micro content is taking content and chopping it up into several smaller pieces of content. For example, this podcast episode is being recorded on video and audio and it's about 4 minutes long. That can be kind of long for ...
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July 27, 2020 • 4 min
We have had to hire remotely over the last few months entirely on video. We interviewed Francesca, a new member of our sales team, a guy named James out of North Carolina and now we’ve got an offer out to another employee located in Miami, Florida.
While most of our team is local, we’re almost at the halfway point where almost half of our team is remote. We want the best people with the best skills and we don’t really care where ...
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July 26, 2020 • 4 min
Something we’ve battled with for quite a while and never done is niche. We’ve been asked what we specialize in as far as industries are concerned and even though we specialize in some select services, there’s no industry that we focus on 100%. We’re always working with new clients and learning to adapt to their industry and it helps us stay on our toes and allows us to do something different.
This has probably stunted our growth a...
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July 25, 2020 • 3 min
When it comes to your business you should always think long-term. If you're a sole proprietor or you're just starting out it's easy to think you don't need to document processes because you might be the only one doing the work or there are just a few of you doing the work. But, if the goal is to one day scale the business it is important to start documenting processes early on. It might not be necessary in the b...
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July 24, 2020 • 5 min
Erik recently hosted a #LunchtimeLive with Brian Butler who happens to be a high school friend of Erik who has made a name for himself as a mixed martial arts agent. Think Jerry McGuire but UFC.
These LunchtimeLives dive into what different marketing techniques people have used that make them stand out in their industries and allowed them to gain some traction. We ask them what is their key to success in their industry.
What Bri...
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