Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you don't have passion for what you're doing, you're not going to keep up.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Hey, what's up, everyone?
Welcome to another episode of the Managing Partners podcast.
Today I have a special guest, a blast or yeah, a blast from the past. I should say a previous host, who we're going to meet in just a second.
But first I want to give a quick shout out to our partner, our sponsor, Answering Legal. Check them out. They're an awesome company. They specialize in answering phones for law firms. And to test them out, I went ahead and had us use them for our phones. And so it's been a great experience so far.
But we also have a special deal, 400 free trial minutes.
And just go to answeringlegal.com array and check that out and give them a shot. So appreciate, guys. Now back to the episode. Who do we have on today? It's my business partner and friend. Eric J. Olson is in the house. So welcome to the show.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Hello, Mr. Daisy. Thank you for having me back.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: You know, I thought we weren't gonna have you back on the show. That was the whole point. But yeah, here's. Here you are.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: You know, I missed the days of being a co host for the podcast. Those were good times, but I had to hand the reins over to you.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you look back at our show, if you're new to the show or maybe you're a veteran, Eric and I started this podcast together and we co hosted it. So each of us recording multiple times a month with lawyers and guests all around the world. So quite, quite fun. So he's, you know, he's put the time in on the show and. But he's doing bigger, better things. We're here to talk about some of those things today. And so Eric, just, I guess for those that may not know you, I mean, come on, they know you. But let's just pretend there's someone out there that doesn't know who you are. Give us a little background and. About the show.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. So my name is Eric J. Olson. I am the CEO of Array Digital and Kevin's co founder. Been at it now for almost eight years. Kevin, our eight year anniversary is coming up. Isn't that crazy?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I had to cover this gray up and spray paint it this morning.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: You know, I would say the same, but there's not really any covering up this gray. I. I used to have hair just like Kevin when we first started out. Actually, I didn't, but yeah, it's been a, it's been a good journey. There's been a lot of learning that, that we've done together. I think we're both quite proud of the organization that we built and. Yeah, so. So we started the. For. For those that don't know, Kevin said. I used to co host this podcast and Kevin and I would alternate, so I'd have an episode where it was me interviewing someone and he would have a. An episode where he interviewed someone. And about a year ago, we made a switch where Kevin took over the podcast and I started to transition out of the day to day business development and day to day management of Array Digital and focus on the. The larger organization. We, we own a couple of niche and Array was the first. And because of the success that we had at Array, we spun off a few other niche agencies and they're growing and they need a little bit of TLC as well. So I stepped away from Array and I'm working more at the portfolio level at this point, supporting all the agencies.
But Array is my baby. I love it dearly and I'll make sure that it's always successful.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, a couple things there, folks. One, if you're, you know, a lawyer running your own firm, whether you're solo or running a bigger firm, you know, what area Eric has done and what we've done together is, you know, he's backed out of working inside this company. Right. And so things you might be trying to accomplish, working on the business and, you know, some of the things that we had to put in place and learn the hard way, some through people telling us, but you just don't listen. And going back to the, you know, to all those things, I mean, Eric could talk about a million different things on this podcast today, but we wanted to narrow it down to something that is tangible, something you can take action on, something that we feel we've done a good job with. And Eric's took in it and ran with it, and some of the stuff that we do that's unique, but back to where we are, how we got where we are, and how Eric's able to do what he's doing is by putting a lot of these things in place that you learn in all the books you read, all the coaches you listen to.
At just some point, it sinks in enough to where you actually do it, if the pains enough.
So, yeah, Eric, what we're going to talk about today has to do with core values, but I think that goes back to the beginning of things where we kind of set some core values, and that's stuck with Us, but elaborate on that if you want.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Sure. So my role now is more on the business end of running the agency. And of course that has a lot to do with numbers and with growth projections and legal things like that, putting together some programs that are consistent across the agencies, like K benefits, all those kinds of things. And you know, one of the things that you may not think is core to the business of an agency, or any business for that matter, is really the kind of, the less tangible aspects of the business. In particular, the squishy kind of emotions and characteristics of a personality, the personalities in a business. But it's one of those core things that has to be aligned between you, your business and your people or else it's going to make running a business very, very difficult. So what I mean by that are things like core values, a belief in a mission, a belief in a purpose. Again, as the business end of the agency, you may not think that I would speak often about those kinds of things because they're very subjective, but they're fundamental to running a good company. And so I actually spend a decent amount of time on things like core values and conveying the mission and the vision for the organization, like one of my jobs. I heard it said in a podcast recently, different podcasts, that as the founder, you're the holder of the vision.
So you're the one that makes you set the vision. But you also have to reiterate it over and over and over again because in the day to day dealing with clients, it's very easy for your staff to forget. So you're the one that has to come in and remind people why you're doing what you do, what is the purpose, what's the meaning behind all of this? And in our profession, just like with lawyers, but in our profession, using our profession as the example, it can be very easy to just focus in on clicks and search engine result pages and social media views, all the nitty gritty, which is important.
But who's the holder? Who's the keeper of the vision? Let's get back to what's important about what we do here. Just a couple of days ago, someone commented in our Slack workspace about all of the leads that he was seeing come through for one of our clients contact forms and how he's responsible to make sure these contact forms are working. And he's glancing at what's being submitted. And what he's seeing is that there are people in the world that have real problems that they need help with. They need a lawyer. And because of the Work that we're doing when it comes to advertising, SEO, we can attract those people with a very strong need, with the people that are very skilled at solving that problem, our clients, the lawyers.
And it actually gives us great satisfaction to know that we can use our skills to help people get out of situations that they're in. So, you know, going back to the business of agency, yes, there's a lot of numbers, there's a lot of insurance, legal, and. But at the very beginning, is that kind of like soft, squishy, emotional vision? Like, what are we doing here? Purpose driven organization. And so I'm very involved in that. I'm also, of course, involved in the numbers.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: No, it's, it really is. You know, as entrepreneurs, you know, you're. You see the vision clearly, no problem. You don't have to be told. Again, I don't have to tell, Eric, hey, this is why we're doing this or like whatever or where we're going. But your folks, you know, that work for you and your team members, like, they, they're not going to align with that quite as vividly as you, you know, and it's going to be different across different folks. They have to know that why they're here. Is it just a job or is it a career? Is it something more than that? And you have to create that culture and work on it. It's something that we have to continuously say, hey, here's what we're here. You get caught in the minutia or meetings or the ups and downs of just employment or whatever, it's got to go back to why are we here? What are we doing? And are they still on board with that? They still believe that. Are they the right fit? That's why we have the core values. Hire by them, fire by them. You know, do your analysis of how things are going by those core values to make sure, you know, both parties are on the same page and that they need to be or they want to be here and that we need them here. And it's okay if it's not, you know, aligned anymore. It's not always going to be. So a lot of lessons learned out of that, too. Your best. We've had our best folks, Eric. I mean, go start their own companies or go somewhere else or just go a different direction completely, and you're not going to stop that from happening.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And like you said, we hire by these core values, we fire by them.
This is stuff that as entrepreneurs, everybody says to us, right? You read, you pick up any of these books and it's going to say that core value is super important. Higher bottom. Fire bottom. I think that we've done a pretty good job, I would say, of implementing these core values into the daily routine of the company. But actually I want to kind of go back a little bit, take a step back as to how we got to where we're at when it comes to core values.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Today's episode is brought to you by Answering Legal. Now. I just switched my company Array Digital over to Answering Legal and it's made my life a whole lot easier. If I can't get to the phone, their 247 virtual receptionists take the call and take them through a full intake process so we never miss new business again.
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[00:12:14] Speaker A: So both Kevin and I ran our own independent agencies before we met and merged to form Array Digital almost eight years ago. And so the core value concept for me, you know, you may have your own story, Kevin, but for me it went to before Array Digital and I was running this small agency and there was a person that was working for me and he was, he was just struggling. It just wasn't working out. And even though I mentored and I compensated, it just, it wasn't working out and I couldn't really figure out what it was. But I knew he wasn't a fit and I ended up firing the guy. And it was one of my first, like real terminations and it didn't go very well and it was just a very difficult conversation for me to have at the time. And I didn't really understand like what the problem was. I just said there was a problem and I responded to the problem well. After he was terminated, I took a couple weeks to think about and figure out like, what was he missing that I needed. Clearly there was something or multiple things that attributes that he did not bring to the table. And did some reading and I came across the concept of core values. And so I started to think about, okay, well, what are some core values that I want in this company? And core values as the entrepreneur, as the founder? It's as a founder of a company, which is actually not even really an official role or title, but if you're the founder of a company, it's actually your responsibility to define the core values that you want everyone in the company to operate under or to bring to the table and to make sure that they continue to operate and to live up to those core values. It's your job to define it. That's what I learned during this period of reflection after terminating the employee. And I came up with a series of core values that was the basis I started to hire and fire by those. And I started to actually say these things to my employees, the ones that were already there. And it was a little awkward because some of the core values that I had picked were inspirational, if you will. If the bar was set here with my current company on a particular core value, then I had set it a little bit higher. I wanted my existing team to get better, to rise to the core values that I was setting. But I didn't put the bar so high that it was ridiculous. So as an example, one of my first core values was on time. I just want you to deliver this product on time. That's something we believe in, right, guys? And the reason I did that is because at the time, we were chronically late delivering product. If I said that this thing was going to go live on January 1, nine times out of 10, January 1 would come and go, and it wasn't live. Maybe the 15th, maybe February 1st, maybe we don't know. And I'm like, okay, we can't have that. I need to at least establish that we're going to be on time. And that set the expectation and set the tone. Tone with the team. This is what I expect of you. Some people didn't like it. They wanted to be late, and I had to have some conversations with them. None of those folks were with us today. And we've since raised the bar even higher. No longer is it on time. We'll get into the details maybe of individual core values. But that was a very. That was just setting the bar at something so that I could establish the expectations. And this is something also like, as an entrepreneur that is. It's quite weird. You may not be comfortable, but it's your job as the founder to set the expectations. And not only set them, but to verbalize them and put them in Writing.
So it's a weird position as a person to say to some other professional that you know, is very capable to say, this is what I expect of you. And as almost blunt, as bluntly as I just said that, like, that's how it needs to come across. Kevin, I expect X, Y and Z. Are we on the same page? It's a weird thing to do, but it's very important to set those expectations. And core values are where you start to set those expectations.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, to your point, you're setting them along the way or after the fact. Right. So now you have to take your existing team and those listening may have like widely half core values. You're going to have to set those with the existing team. And some of them might not align, but you have to do that. Right. You have to take the time to figure that out. And Eric did the, you know, core values for me, I think on a mission and a vision and proudly put it on my website. I don't think I had core values. I knew of them. Eric's is the reason I got introduced to, okay, what are these core values? And he. And when we met, he was already preaching them and working them into things.
And so. But I still felt like even then. And they were kind of like, yeah, we were. They were there, but it wasn't quite nowhere near where we are today. Of course, they've changed quite a few times as well, which we can get into. But, yeah, it's something that you have to set. You have to do it as soon as possible. If you're starting a new firm and it's just you by yourself, you need to go through the exercise and say, all right, if I'm going to hire a person tomorrow or next year, what do I want to set? What do I expect from them? What are we going to live by that's important to do? So if you haven't done that exercise, I would definitely do that. If you have an existing firm with lots of people, it's just going to be more difficult for you, but it's still something you have to do.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And as Kevin just said, these core values have changed over time. And I think that's okay. Actually, I think that's a good thing. As the company matured, we saw that we should make some changes. And so what do you do in a situation like that where you recognize that something you've been preaching is not exactly your belief right now because the company's gotten bigger, you've changed as a person.
The clients, maybe the Industry have changed, things have changed.
Should you feel like you have to stick with those original core values and never change them or should they morph with you?
I think you could probably guess for me. My opinion is they should morph with you. You should have an incredibly strong belief in every one of your core values and if they need to change, change them and explain to your crew why they're changing. I think that's the important part. Don't just change them and say, ah, I want your core values. Just pay attention to these now forget about those old ones. Explain why. So as an example, one of the core values that I had back in the day was honesty.
Because I had a problem.
I had at least one or two people that weren't quite as honest as I would like them to be. And that was a problem for me. So I set the bar and I brought it down pretty low, saying you have to be honest. Well, once I rooted that problem out and the core values helped a lot just by saying things like you have to be honest or else you're not going to make it here. Just by saying that you can root out some of these problems in your organization, people will self select out and if they don't, then you can always point to the core values and say, hey, this is a core value. And I just caught you in a lie. This is a problem. We can't have that. Well, honesty, it actually, it changed over time. I realized that was so fundamental. Of course that should be a core value. That's something I would expect of any person in my life, period.
And it morphed. In that particular case, it morphed to transparency. So not only do I expect you to be honest, but I expect you to be very transparent about what's going on. Don't hide details, don't hide information.
You should openly share what's going on internally, externally, with the team, with your clients. Like don't, don't hide information. Be honest about it and be forthright about it. If you'd like, Kevin, we can go into like maybe one at a time. I was thinking maybe go through the core values and then we could talk about some of the systems we put in place.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Yeah, so, absolutely. So every day, everyone listening, we have some things that you can put in place, what we do and how we use the core values on a daily basis. So we're going to get into that. One sec, I just wanted to mention. Yeah, real quick, the bar was set low on some of these.
Obviously you're not going to work here if you're not honest, but that's where we were at the time. And so for me, we haven't changed them in a while. As we leveled up and the team became what it needed to be, then we could change them. Right? And so it's like, hey, these are like starting points, but they're not really aspirational. And so as we got better, the team got better. The core values had to change to go along with what we expected and honestly, what the team would expect of another team member if we hired them at this point. And the cool thing is the team now expects these from one of their colleagues. Right. So it's not just Eric weeding out the bad apple. It's the team will bring it forward. Right. And so, yeah, I think absolutely leveled those up. Making the changes was necessary. And I would definitely, if someone says, no, don't ever change them. I don't. I don't think that's necessarily the way to go. Maybe at some point, like, we've gotten to a pretty good point where they haven't changed, but I think we would really. We would know if they needed to change. Like, we talk about them so often that I think it would be pretty clear.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: So do you remember about two years ago, we hired a management consultant to do a big project for us, and one of their recommendations was, throw out your core values and bring in these other core values.
And we rejected it. We rejected it. It's like, no, no. These core values, this is very meaningful to us. And it's not that we're impervious to suggestions to modify, but to wholesale throw ours out and instill a whole new set of core values to us. That was a deal breaker, and we rejected that. No, we're not doing that. We're sticking with our core values. We believe in these because it's core to our foundation.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah, no, they might have seen, like, hey, these are what work for other companies that we work with, so just plug and play. But no, it's. It's. I mean, the whole team would be like, what. What's going on? You know, like, this. Isn't this an us so good move on that part? So, yeah, but they have changed over time. I remember when we went to Entrepreneurs Organization, which Eric is a member of. Great group. If you don't know who they are. But we did a workshop. We're like, core values workshop. We have our core values. And this is early days.
And it was like, honesty. And someone's like, honesty, that's a given. And we were like. And so we started that day, we did a workshop, and we came out with quite a few updates to refine some of our core values at that point. And that kind of started us on the path of, well, you can change these.
And they've morphed over the time. So, yeah, let's go through each of our core values and talk about each one, and then we'll. We'll talk about how to put them to work.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'll stick with transparency.
So that's our first core value. Probably about five or six years ago, we had someone working here. He was an SEO. And at the time, we were really struggling with SEO. Remember those days where we're like, how does this actually work? We hired someone who proclaimed to be an SEO expert.
And at the time, again, we were trying to figure it out. And so we took his word for it and we hired him, and he was getting results. But one of the problems that we had was he wouldn't share how he did it. He would explicitly tell us, no, that's my intellectual property knowledge. I'm not going to tell you how I do it.
And we thought, that's so weird. Like, you're. You're part of the team, aren't you? And at the time, I believe we still had honesty as a core value. And we realized, well, this guy's not gonna work out.
It's not that he's being dishonest, but, like, we need more out of this honesty thing. Like, we expect more. Like, if you're part of the team, you're part of the team. Like, why are you withholding this knowledge? That's. That's one of the. That's the thing that an employee brings to the table. They bring their experience. You hire based on experience and core values, but you hire like, someone shouldn't even make it in the door, really, unless they have some level of experience.
That's what they're bringing. So the fact that he didn't want to share any experience or any knowledge was baffling to us. He didn't make it. We very quickly.
He very quickly exited from the company.
And I believe you and I, Kevin, at that time, we talked about it, and we're like, all right, like, dishonesty thing is close, but not quite. And we changed it to transparency. So what we want from transparency is we want not only for our folks to be transparent to their team members, to their clients, but to be perceived as someone that is transparent. And that's a significant part of it. It's not just doing it but being perceived by the other party that you're actually living up to that core value. Because perception is reality. And so if someone doesn't feel like I'm being transparent, then I'm probably not.
And so there's that soft squishy stuff, right? It's not just doing this thing, but it's conveying that you're providing all the information that you have to people. So transparency, you know, interestingly, it's, for me, like, that's the core. Core. Like, that's the super basic core value. It's actually not cited a lot within our team because it is just one of those basic tenets, kind of like honesty. It's a, it's a, it's a variation of honesty. It has to be there. It just has to. There's. There's no negotiation. If you're not transparent, then I don't know how I can work with you.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, when we get into like, how we use core values and on a daily basis, you'll. We'll kind of get this. But yeah, when I, When I, when I give someone a transparency kind of, you know, points or, you know, again, what we'll get into in a minute or say, hey, this employee or this team member was in trans, it's usually a bigger thing, right? It was a bigger event, if you will. And so it's not taken lightly. I feel like when someone does use that core value to say, hey, Eric was transparent, it's usually some bigger situation. So it's not used as often, but it's like, it's definitely the most important of the core value and I think the hardest to live up to. Quick example, as you know, this was kind of a new core value. We do a lot of websites. We have hundreds of websites that we host and manage. And we had a client website that was down for like 20 minutes on a weekend or something like that. And we went to one of our team members and like, hey, did you tell the client? And they're like, no, the client doesn't even know. It was like on the weekend.
So they don't know. We shouldn't say anything. Honestly, that's coming from a web guy. I'd probably be like, yeah, I don't just. And then something in Eric. Eric was just like, we gotta tell him. And like, well, that. Why, like, oh, no, let's not do that. So we. That's kind of started this whole, like, well, let's let them know. Because what if they did see it and they just haven't told us yet. And they're just waiting in the background looking for us to make a mistake. And so that kind of changed the conversation. Okay, well, yeah, what if they did see it? And on Monday they're gonna, maybe they're gonna blow up about it. So. Hey, by the way, client, your website was down from this time to this time. You know, we, we saw it, here's what we did to fix it, here's what we think happened. Client was not mad at all. They appreciated that. And that kind of became the trend with that after action reports, lessons learned, Digging deep and saying, hey, what did happen? Not pointing fingers at people like, hey, Eric's the problem, he did it. Hey, what happened? Let's break it down, let's look at timelines, let's give that report to the client. Never have they been mad at us or fired us. When we do something like that, they actually appreciate it. It shows that we can go forward and do things better. So just a quick story on transparency. And it can be difficult for most people to want to do naturally.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah, naturally. Right. And the natural tendency is to cover your tracks. Cya.
But which is worse, the crime or the COVID up? Well, typically it's the COVID up. So what I've found is actually by being transparent in any regard, business, personal, if you're transparent, especially when you screw up, which happens to me every once in a while. Okay, a lot.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: No way.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: If you're transparent, it's almost like you're disarming the other person when you say, oh, hey, Kevin, I screwed up, man. You probably don't even realize it, but like, I screwed up. And now all of a sudden, like, I've just almost like recruited Kevin in this example to help solve the problem versus Kevin, doubting my intentions, doubting what actually happened. Now we're partners in trying to solve this common problem. So transparency, incredibly valuable to us. Yeah.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: And it's hard to blame someone hardcore. Blame them when they came forward first and said, hey, I did this and I messed up, can be powerful for the team.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. Now, something that's a lot easier for us to see and put our hands on, so that's less squishy and soft is quality. Although there is a lot of subjectivity to that. But most of us can look at something and determine if it's quality work or not. So quality is our second core value. Now, the reason that this is a core value is because frankly, some people don't value quality. There are certainly companies out there, agencies and beyond, where quality is not something that they value and they're pumping out quantity or they're just a sales organization and they don't really care about, like, the actual implementation. Well, that's something that we, we just can't live with. We have to believe that we are providing the best quality product that we can.
Based on the situation now, I'm not saying it's going to be the best quality ever in the universe. That like, like there's. Okay, let's get real. Are there other agencies or other companies that are doing higher quality work somewhere in the world? Absolutely. But given our position, our market position, our clients, our clients, budgets, all those things, are we doing the highest quality, best job that we can? That's the goal. So there's, yeah, there's caveats to there. I'm not saying, like, we are absolutely, no doubt about it, indisputable world champs number one. But we're going to be very, very good. We're going to believe when we look at a product that that is a quality product or service that we're providing, that we stand behind very important. And like I said, some companies just, either they haven't verbalized it or they don't actually live by that. For us, it's important to do both. So we live by quality.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I think to add to that real quick is, I think, you know, lawyers listening, the quality, you know, when you put out, you know, the work that you do and you're going into a case, it's, do you feel good? You're a colleague. If they're kind of like, I'm gonna send this over, like, you know, you can feel it, you know, it. Is this quality work or do you have a comment or do you have an improvement to it? Right. And so we want our team to, to say, hey, Eric, you're not sending that over, are you? Because this isn't good. We need to, we need to fix this. And so we want folks to be able to share and come forward and then go, hey, hey, can you look at this for me? You know, peer review it, whatever it may take. But is that. Do you feel good about the quality? You're going to feel good about it if you're ready to send it or not.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's not only instilling in our individual employees that we expect quality work from you, but to also validate that your team members are doing quality work. So there's, it's actually in our employee handbook that we encourage you, actually it's expected of you to speak up when you see something that is inferior. So if Kevin were to put out a proposal as an example, he does a lot of business development. If he were to put out a proposal, and I'm like, this is terrible. Like, if I thought that, it's incumbent upon me, whether I'm the CEO or not, but as an employee at Array Digital, to say, Kevin, we need to work on this.
And so it's up to me as an individual, this is the expectation that we're setting with our folks, is that I expect you as an employee to speak up directly when you see something inferior. You don't need to route it through a manager, go direct and say, hey, Kevin, that's a no go. Like, we got to work on this. And so there's some personal responsibility there, for sure, not only to create quality work, but to enforce that the organization is putting on quality work, which, you.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Know, kind of ties some transparency in there, too.
Hey, I'm being transparent here. We need to work on this. What's up next, Mr. Olson?
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Next is. It's something I started to talk about a little bit when I said I had a core value back in the day about on time. I just wanted my team to get things done on time. That's all I was asking. Just don't be late, or at least not significantly late. Well, once we accomplished that and I rooted out some of the fundamental problems in the organization and we were on time, I realized that's great, but it's actually not good enough. It really needs to be more than just on time. It needs to be urgent. So if you have, let's say, a month to complete a website, absolutely, you got to bring it in in a month. But I'd really rather it be three weeks, because if we can get it out and onto the server faster, that means that our client will benefit from that new website on their server. It'll start to marinate and Google and get more rankings quicker than if we just withhold it and take our time. So urgency is a. Is a big core value. And it's one of those things that honestly, like, we can butt up against that sometimes, and not just as a company, but as people, for whatever reason. Urgency is a very difficult one to master because our natural inclination is to preserve energy and put off something from today and push it to tomorrow. I want to take those things from tomorrow and pull them back into today.
So as a personal anecdote, Kevin, you're very well aware of this. I have what's called a power list, and I tell my employees all the time about this. In the morning, before I leave the house, I write the five things that I want to do today. The top five, actually the only five things that have to get done today. And it could be things that I was planning on doing, like, in a couple days or. But I could pull them back into today. And I write it down and I go about my day. I structure my entire day to make sure that I get those five things done. So here's an example of how I make sure I do that. We use an internal communication tool called Slack, and it can be very noisy, meaning, like a lot of chatter and lots of projects and people with opinions and asking for your help or whatnot. We have multiple companies, and it can get very, very loud if I allow it to be loud. I haven't looked at it in hours. And it's not that I'm neglecting my team. I will look at it. But my goal, I write it down every. Every morning. Am I remarkable? But my goal is before I leave, those things are done, or at least the things that I need to be, that I need to do here in the office get done. Those are the most important. So I prioritize today's tasking to not push it to tomorrow. So on a personal level, I have urgency when it comes to the critical tasks I need to get done. And I convey that story, I convey that way of work into the team. And hopefully we've all, individually, as staff members, exhibited that in some regard.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Yeah, no, the palace is powerful, so it's been very useful for me. I only do three. Three items usually, but it's, you know, it was the same. If you got two hours to do something, you're going to take two hours to do it. Right. You know, so your. Your mind's going to work that out to make it take two hours. So it might take you 15 minutes, but. And, you know, think about that across all the tasking and things that we have to do as team members or whoever, how much that can impact you over time. So just have an urgency with what our clients need. Pushing deadline, things done that are important first is massive. And, you know, it's just a problem that's in our industry too, I think, is having that urgency. So that one's a huge one. And I. I use that one quite often on a daily basis.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And, you know, the listener or the viewer may be thinking, well, that must be nice to be able to do that. Right. Like, but I've got all these fires I got to put out. This will help you put out the fires, get caught up, and then you could even start thinking into the future.
So we've gotten to the point, and I say we because it's not just me that benefits from, like, the power list or, like, the urgency, but, like, we slash. I have gotten to the point where I can look weeks, months, even years into the future and be like, all right, what do I need to do now to set up that thing that I want? Actually, I want to show you this show. I mean, this is us in 2030 after we've hit our goal of $100 million agenc. It's visualized, right? Like, by. By doing these in order. In order to grow a company that big, like, it. It. You can't take your time.
And so you have to be not only putting out the fires, but creating a structure to think years ahead and start putting the. The wheels in motion now in order to achieve those goals. So urgency is incredibly important.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: If you're just putting out fires of the day, guess what? Tomorrow's gonna have a ton of fires too. And so then you're just always stuck in putting out fires, and you're never getting the things done that you need to get done now that the fires aren't important.
Yeah. Leave room for the fires and make sure you get your other stuff done.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clearly, you have to put out the fires, but you don't want to spend your days doing just that. So let's be urgent about it. Let's put things in place today when we just naturally want to wait until tomorrow or next week or it's a Friday. I don't want to do it. No, do it on Friday. Like, let's get it done. Let's move on, Focus on a new problem instead of dealing with the old problems.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Love it. What do we got next? What's next on the list Next?
[00:39:17] Speaker A: So there's five core values. We've hit three. So we hit transparency, quality, urgency. The next one on the list is winning. Now, winning is. The concept here, is. I want it to be natural for us to believe and experience the feeling of winning. There was a time where things weren't going well. We were losing clients, we were losing employees. Maybe we were losing money, and it became almost accepted. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not acceptable to be not winning.
So the norm needs to be winning and winning on a regular basis. It shouldn't feel odd when you win a new client, when you get your client, great results. When your client is growing their Business because of the work that we're doing and they're doing. But that shouldn't be the oddity. It should be normalized. So winning needs to be normalized around here. So that's one of the core values that we talk about a lot, actually. Whenever someone sees that, like, their advertising campaign has done well, or their keywords are ranking, or we got a new client that came to us as a referral, that's winning. I like the feeling of winning, and I want to do more of it.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And then celebrating the wins, small wins, internal wins, teams, you know, getting promoted or whatever it may be, but just constantly trying to up our game but not being surprised from, oh, we. We landed that big client. Of course we did. No, that's. That's normal. We expected it. So I love that one. I use that one a lot.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's four, so that was pretty interesting.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: That one's pretty easy.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So we've gone through transparency, quality, urgency, winning. The last and final core value for us is passion. Now, I told you the story before about the previous employee that I fired, and it didn't go well, and I wasn't really sure exactly what the problem was. And when it came down to it, one of the problems that I realized was that for him at the time, maybe it's different now for him, but at the time, this was a job. It was just a job. There was no passion. So whereas I, then and now, would just study the craft nonstop here at work, I'd do it. I'd go home, I'd watch videos, I'd read books, I'd read blog posts. We had a podcast, you and I, Kevin, called Journey to A Hundred Million Dollars, where we were talking about growing our agency. We did the managing partners podcast where we're talking about getting into legal, digital marketing. Like, we. We just have so much passion that when someone finds their way into the organization, that completely lacks passion. This is just a paycheck for them. It's a clash of cultures. And so people here have to be passionate about it. They have to be passionate about what they're doing, passionate about helping their clients. And if. If it's just, like, they could take it or leave it, well, then I'd prefer that you leave it. And, you know, we actually speak to job candidates, employees, and people who want to become employees. We actually tell them, like, hey, if you don't believe in these things, that's totally cool. No judgment, but we're not a fit. You have to have these core values. And passion is one of those things that, like, in our industry, you have to have it because the industry changes so fast, almost literally on a daily basis. There is some sort of big breaking change in digital marketing. Whether it's Google changing their algorithm or Facebook doing something, or Instagram or Blue sky or X, you know, used to be Twitter, now it's X. And there's different rules. Like it's constantly changing, like I said, almost on a daily basis. If you don't have passion for what you're doing, you're not going to keep up. And if you can't keep up, then you can't adhere to the other core values, like urgency, like winning. So you have to have passion to get in here.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah, passion was huge. One we used to have learning, I believe, or something like that. And we had a couple different ones, and passion kind of wrapped them all up. It was, well, if you're passionate, you're going to continue to learn, you're going to continue to work on it, you're going to get better. If you're passionate, you're also going to put out quality work. Right. So there's a lot of things that passion drives. But yeah, if you're, if you're sitting here listening and you have paralegals that aren't passionate or they're not trying to get better, have been paralegal, then is it really something that they should be doing? You know, depending on what your. Your culture is over there, if you don't want to be a lawyer, you know, probably not going to be a good experience for you or them if they continue to just show up every day. Right. So if you're not passionate about being a lawyer, maybe you're passionate about running a business. You know, I talk to lawyers all day. I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to run the business. Cool. Make that decision, you know. But you're passionate about one of those things.
Maybe you're passionate about both of those things. And I know plenty of lawyers like that, too. So I think passion's. That was a deal breaker. All of them are deal breakers. But, you know, that one I think it's easy to see too. Like, if you have someone just kind of like, you know, showing up, they don't talk up, they don't speak up, they don't contribute. You know, it's pretty clear that there's passion that's lacking. There's.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah, they're punching a clock.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: And that is one of the highest cited core values. And I'll get into that in just a second about the citations that we're referring to. But yeah, just for the sake of recapping for the audience. So we have the five core values here to array digital. We have transparency, quality, urgency, winning, and passion. Just like any other company that has core values, we say all the right things. We hire by them, we promote by them, we fire by them. They are printed on a poster right outside of my office here, right? Every company should do those things. Most companies stop at that point. They'll print it on a poster and they hang it and then they. It's there, they kind of forget about it. Maybe it comes up at the annual meeting or quarterly meeting of the company, but they're not really living it. And we, I think all of us know, anyone who's in business that's, that's listening to this or watching this right now, you know that you're. You need to live by those core values, not just do the exercise once. Print the poster, be done with it, put a check in the checkbox. Now you need to live by it. So as I was coming up with the concept of core values, I did a lot of research to see how other people are doing these things. Mission value, core values. Mission vision, core values. How are other companies doing this? And I modeled this system, which I kind of stole, borrowed and modified from Silicon Valley. And the system is what we call the Kudos system. So I think I mentioned before, we use Slack and we have a Slack channel called Kudos. And in that channel, anyone in the company can give someone else kudos. So as an example, I could say plus five points to Kevin for having me on the podcast Passion. What I just did there is I awarded him some points. And it's a point value between 1 and 10 to a person. Kevin. It could be multiple people.
And I have to cite the core value that it pertains to. In this case, this example, it was passion. And we have automation that records all of that. And then at the end of the month, the person who got the most points from their peers in each one of the core values is recognized. And the person that got the most points overall gets a cash bonus. So we actually put our money where our mouth is. I started that on day one. This is probably like eight, nine years ago, pre array digital. And over the years when times have been tough, when we've been cash strapped, when Covid hit, I wasn't sure about the future. I've always thought about, well, maybe this is the opportunity to cut that, Stop giving away that cash bonus. But that's one of the things that we kept the whole way through. It's never changed. We've always given a monthly cash bonus and now that we have multiple companies, we do it on multiple. One bonus for company one, one bonus for company two. It's that important. So it's a small amount, but really what we're doing is we're taking the time to recognize the individual. Kevin, you had the most kudos this month.
Well done. So we're publicly recognizing if we're in a company meeting as part of the slide deck and everyone claps and they do like, you know, hearts on the screen and all that stuff.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. I mean, it was the coolest thing I saw, you know, when we, when we got together. And it's not just that though. It's. Yeah, we, we recognize someone on a monthly basis. But as we're talking right now, even if I went, if I went to Slack, you'd see kudos coming in.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: So peers are recognizing other peers and they're, they're given, hey, this person's done a good job. And they tell the whole company that in the middle of the day, hey, Eric is awesome, or he did a good job here. And people see that and then they like it and they heart it and all this other stuff. And sometimes it's small stuff and sometimes it's like big stuff. Like, hey, we just signed this big client and you know, these people on the team helped make that possible.
So, yeah, so it's just as a daily.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: If you don't mind.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it right now. I'm not going to say exactly what it is, but I'll give you the gist. Plus 10 to Jacobo for putting together material to help clients with the portal login and jumping on an urgent request from a client. Hashtag urgency, hashtag passion. So two core values were cited there to Jacobo. Here's another one right after that. Plus 10 to Jacobo for his diligence in ensuring our client receives all leads in all the places that are designed to go. Hokobo is killing it right now. He's racking up the points and it's great. I love seeing this. Here's another one to Jacobo. Here's one from you, Kevin to Wyatt. So what's great about it from my perspective, is one, our team is self reinforcing these core values. You have to put a core value on those kudos or else it'll get rejected, it will come back and say, I reject your entry. Because you did not set a core value. We've programmed that in. So what's great is you and I, Kevin, as founders, we came up with these core values, and we've modified them over the years, but now our team is actually, on a daily basis, multiple times a day, they're signing them. It's very humbling to me.
But also as. As, as, you know, as a CEO, you know, you start to lose touch with all the things that are going on. I did not know that Jacobo had done these things until I just read it. I wasn't aware. And so think about all the things in your company that are happening behind the scenes that you're just not aware of.
So these kudos actually are data entry points into the annual review. That's another thing that we do here that's a little bit different. So the kudos system is voluntary. I am voluntarily giving someone else like Kevin points, even though that means I probably am less likely to get the cash bonus. But I want to give Kevin the points that he deserves, to my detriment. Right. If you think about it from like a game theory kind of perspective, because he deserves it.
And then. And then that will get pushed into. As input into the interview. So the annual review, we've incorporated the core values there as well. The supervisor has the five core values, and their instructions are to grade the person being reviewed by each one of those core values on a scale of A plus to F. And not only that, but why? So I may say something like. Let's just say I were reviewing Kevin. I don't. I don't do his review, but let's say I was. And hey, he had a couple oopsies this year when it came to quality. I put in there something like B minus. Kevin, you had an oopsie here and oopsie there, and it cost us a client or it cost us a bad review or something. I would. I would cite this specific example, but link it to a core value or just the opposite, Kevin, your work is flawless. This client left a Google review for us saying how amazing it was to work with you. And all your numbers were spot on.
Good job. Right. A plus.
So those are the kinds of feedback that we give in a very formal annual review kind of setting based on the core values.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can see if they've been giving core, you know, giving kudos or receiving kudos, make sure they're participating as well. Right. So it's not just.
Is Anyone siloed? Hey, they're not getting any and they're not giving any. That's potentially a problem. Right.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: I think one of the coolest things is you could pull any one of our team members off the street and they could actually tell you all of our core values. Like, I'm confident in that. Maybe not the descriptions, but they could definitely cite what they are because they literally use every day, per day.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: Yep. And they probably have some of their favorites that they use over and over again when it comes to kudos awards. But I would say confident they could, they could off the top of their head, name three out of five and I'm okay with that. They remember the other ones, but you know, it's across the board, at least people, they're very aware of our core values because it is used on a very daily basis. And. And those ones that I just read to you were just from two hours ago, several of them. There's probably half a dozen from today.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the crazy thing. So think about if you have core values or a vision, your mission, if you just cite them once a year, we use them on a daily basis. And Eric still believes that someone probably might miss one or so that aren't used as much, but literally that's how much you have to drill this into your team's head. You got to continue to talk about your vision, your mission, why we're here and who we're looking to be here. Don't expect them to have the passion or excitement about your business as they as you do. So you gotta have to continue to get this stuff in front of them.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. And again, as the founder, as the person running the company, it's your responsibility to be the keeper of that vision and the core values. You have to maintain the spirit that you established in the beginning. You know, one of the things that, that I did recently was I recorded several videos, about 12 videos where I stepped the employees through the employee handbook. And the employee handbook starts very early in the employee handbook. Page one or two is the core values. And I did an entire video just on the core values. Nevermind the mission, the vision, and all the details that go into the employee handbook. We start with the core values and I want to make sure that I explain to every single person they hear from my mouth these stories about why these core values are important, how we got to where we're at, and I wanted to preserve it as well. So it's important enough to me to spend the time to record a video and to archive these thoughts and get it out to the entire team. I'll do it. That's time well spent. So, again, just like you were saying, Kevin, it's incumbent upon the founder, the leader of the Covenant, to continuously repeat yourself. And you probably think to yourself, I just said this last week. Do I really need to say it again? Yeah, you need to say it again. You're the one. It's your responsibility as the leader of your company to make sure that your folks are hearing it over and over and over again. And you have to believe it, because if you don't believe it, then they'll see right through you.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: Yep. 100% transparency. Hashtag, hashtag. So I get points. We're giving points every day. We get monthly winners that are recognized on our company meetings that we have. And then what do we do? And then annual reviews. So using them. But what's the new thing that you've been. You just. You just added a little extra thing to the top of that.
[00:55:36] Speaker A: Yeah, we had. We added. We added something. So we wanted to do more. I wanted to do more. And so, yes, we hire by core values, we promote by core values, we fire by core values. They go into the annual review. We cite them on a daily basis. But one of the things that I wanted to do is I just wanted to make a bigger deal out of it. Again, I feel like this is my responsibility. I need to make a big deal out of these core values. And I wanted to have some sort of tangible award that I could give to people that were exemplifying these core values. And so I came up with this concept of the. We have kudos already. I jokingly call this next thing the cooties. But it's. It's where we have our kudos. Award winners receive a physical trophy once a quarter.
So we have collectively 45 or three companies right now. And what I do is for each core value, I look for the quarter to see who got the most points in each of those core values. And then we select an award, have it printed up in their name and whatnot, and we present it to them at the company meeting. So here I have an example of what I jokingly call a cooties. This is a cootie award. So this is something. This is a heavy glass.
It's legit. What I want is, this was won by Trevor in the first quarter of 2024 for transparency. I want people to be proud of the fact that they got this, put it up on their bookshelf either at work or at home and keep it forever. So that's the quality of trophy that we're after here. We want to do something that's significant, heavy, it feels is physical. I want them to receive it for our remote employees. We send it to them. I'll do a handwritten card as well. We're trying to make a big deal of these things and we only give five of these out every quarter. We've had our first two time winner, we started doing this in the first quarter of 2024, but yeah, we've had a two time winner which is totally cool. You know, I want people to fill up their bookshelves with these, with these awards and keep them forever. So it's, it's yet another expense. But what better way to spend money than on what's valuable to your core values?
[00:58:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really going over well. And, and then Eric, I mean this is really nice. Awards, they're not cheap. They're, I guess they're hand blown or handmade glass and they're, they're different too. So they're not all the same looking. But yeah, it's something that you would be proud to put on your shelf or wherever and keep them forever. I mean it's something, it's showing that hey, I, if you're, you're not here at our companies anymore, hey, I did this, I accomplished this. I was showed this value. Right. And I was recognized for it. So yeah, I think there's been huge impact. The videos of the team around the country, you know, showing a video or a picture of them with their awards has been really cool to see. So yeah, just another way to make a bigger deal out of it like Eric said. And you can bet people are excited when they get that award.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And we just started doing it in 2024. We'll probably up the ante again at some point and have yet another cash bonus that goes along with it. Right now it's just the award, but I want to make a big deal out of it. I want to recognize people not only internally, but publicly. So like I'll put it out on my Instagram and Facebook and all the places you would expect.
I'll highlight our folks. I'm very proud of what they're doing. They're doing a great job. And so the people that are exhibiting these core values the most that are living by them, they deserve the recognition and I'm happy to give it to them.
[00:59:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And then again, they were. The cool thing is that they were put there by the other Team members. So it's, you know, obviously it inspires the other team members to want to be there, too. But at the end of the day, the team put them there. It's not like they're the best salesperson. So we're just going to make them the award winner. They have to live by the core values in order to get those awards.
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. It's very democratic. About as democratic as it gets. It's not me saying, trevor, you get this award. Kevin, you get that. No, like this. These are your peers over days, weeks and months that are giving you these points. It's very meaningful to them. And we've had occasions where employees when they get their kudos bonus or they get the Cooties quarterly award, they can get a little emotional. They're surprised, and it's good validation that. That they need to be recognized that they're doing a good job.
[01:00:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is what it does for your culture, too. It's, again, it's not like, well, why did they win? You know, it's. There's none of that kind of like, you know, why'd they pick him or her? Because they like him better. Like, a lot of companies are like that where it's just very like, you know, well, they work beside them or they're in the office, so they. They get, you know, extra, extra care or whatever. But this is completely the team saying who they want to win. And so it's just really powerful.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: For sure. Yeah.
[01:00:56] Speaker B: Good job, Mr. Rose.
[01:00:57] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Mr. Daisy. Couldn't have done it without you.
[01:01:01] Speaker B: Hashtag passion and winning.
[01:01:04] Speaker A: So I guess to kind of bring it back to the first part of this conversation as the leaders in a company, as the founders, I think it's.
Where I'm at right now is I've concluded I need to be very visible and very active in the fundamentals of the business. Things like core values, mission, vision. I need to be the one that says these things over and over and over again. So that's almost, if you will, like, at the beginning of the process, and then at the end, you have the actual results. Right. Did we make money? Are we growing? So it's almost like you have to be like, I'm very active in the beginning and the end of this whole process. And I leave the. In the middle for. For our company leaders, so the senior leaders here, middle management and individuals to take care of the actual heavy lifting of doing all the things that we're hired to do.
So. And my focus is not on things like SEO. If you want SEO advice like I could give you a little bit, but it may half of it be wrong.
There's way better people to give that kind of advice. But as a leader, I think it's important to focus on the beginning of the process. Core values, whatnot, the fundamentals and the results.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: Yep. And if the team is living to those core values and we got the culture that we, that we do, those things will be taken care of. It's the way to do it. Things are going well. So if you're listening and you know this is something you haven't really dove into or maybe you just have a cuda your core values on a wall on your website. You got questions about what we've done here or how we've even set up like the Slack or the Automations and Zapier and all these kinds of cool things. Reach out Let me know Connect with Eric Eric J. Olson how can they follow you and check you out if they don't currently sure.
[01:02:53] Speaker A: So yeah, again my name is Eric J. Olson. It's Eric with a K and Olson is spelled O L S O N.
I should know that I'm quite active on social media so you'll find me on LinkedIn @EricJ. Olson. Also I I hang out a lot on Instagram and and the the new hot social media platform which I probably should have mentioned because by the time this comes out it may not be hot anymore but blue sky. I'm spending a lot of time on blue sky. So whenever there's a new hotness when it comes to social media, I usually jump on it and see where it goes. So yeah, reach out to me. You can always find me on LinkedIn. That's the easy place to go to. Just search for Eric J. Olson, CEO of Array Digital. I also have a book which is behind me where I talk in more detail about some of the things that got us to the point of being a million dollar company which we've long surpassed.
It's called Million Dollar Journey. It's on Amazon under my name as well.
[01:03:52] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, well again if anyone's just reached out to me too, I'll happy to make a connection to you. Or if you just say again have any questions about some of these things, more detail about what we've done and always looking for feedback too. So if you have a suggestion or something else, folks will always reach out to me and say hey, what if you did this or out of that awesome. Please do please share Leave a comment if you're watching this on LinkedIn or YouTube, I will see those comments. I'll get back to you. And if you message me on LinkedIn, I'll get back to you as well. Well, Eric, I appreciate you coming on back on the show. I'm not sure when I'll let you back on, but it's been pretty informative today.
[01:04:32] Speaker A: Well, thank you for that, Kevin. Thank you for letting me back in. But this is your show. You're doing a great job and I appreciate what you're doing here.
[01:04:40] Speaker B: Hey, it's about the listeners and the guests learning. I learned along the way and obviously get listen to what my guests have to share and just trying to provide value to everyone out there. So if you're in a law firm, you know this show, you know, we bring a lot of cool, talented guests on here and I'm always trying to cover, you know, what you guys are looking for. So if you got any, you know, thoughts, topics you want to hear, guests you'd love to see on the show, if you think you could be a good guest on the show, you've done something interesting in the legal space or would your law firm reach out and connect with me? And I'd love to have you on the show. So until then, we'll see you on the next episode. Eric J. Olson, I will see you probably this afternoon somewhere in the office.
[01:05:27] Speaker A: Thank you, Kevin.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: No problem. All right, everyone get out there. Crush it. We'll see you soon.
