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The Managing Partners Podcast

Erik J. Olson

Episode # 349
Interview on 12.03.2024
Hosted By: Kevin Daisey
Home > Podcast > How to Implement Core Values in Your Company Culture

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About Erik J. Olson

In this episode of the Managing Partners Podcast, Kevin Daisey welcomes back Erik J. Olson to discuss the significance of core values in business. They explore how core values shape company culture, guide hiring and firing decisions, and influence daily operations. Erik shares his journey from co-hosting the podcast to focusing on the broader vision of their agency, Array Digital. The conversation delves into the importance of transparency, quality, urgency, winning, and passion as core values, and how they are implemented and recognized within the organization. The episode emphasizes the need for leaders to continuously communicate and embody these values to foster a thriving workplace culture.

Takeaways:

  • Core values are essential for guiding business decisions.
  • Transparency fosters trust and collaboration within teams.
  • Quality work is a non-negotiable expectation.
  • Urgency helps in meeting client needs promptly.
  • Winning should be a normalized expectation in the workplace.
  • Passion drives employee engagement and performance.
  • Recognition of core values boosts morale and motivation.
  • Leaders must consistently communicate core values.
  • Adapting core values over time is necessary for growth.
  • Implementing systems for recognition reinforces core values.

Episode Transcript:

Erik J. Olson (00:00)
If you don't have passion for what you're doing, you're not going to keep up.

Kevin Daisey (00:04)
Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to another episode of the managing partners podcast. Today I have a special guest, a blast. Yeah. I 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 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 forward slash Array and check that out and give them a shot. So appreciate you guys. Now, about of the episode, who do we have on today? It's,

My business partner and friend, Erik J. Olson is in the house. So welcome to the show.

Erik J. Olson (01:09)
Well, hello,

Mr. Daisy. Thank you for having me back.

Kevin Daisey (01:12)
You know, I thought we weren't going to have you back on the show. was the whole point, but, yeah, here you are.

Erik J. Olson (01:18)
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.

Kevin Daisey (01:26)
Yeah. So if you look back at our show, if you're new to the show or maybe you're a veteran, Erik 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 this show and, but he's doing bigger, better things. We're here to talk about some of those things today and

So Erik, 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.

Erik J. Olson (02:05)
Sure. Yeah, so my name is Erik J. Olson. I am the CEO of Array Digital and Kevin's co-founder. We've been at it now for almost eight years, Kevin. Our eight year anniversary is coming up. Isn't that crazy?

Kevin Daisey (02:18)
I had to cover this gray up and spray paint it this morning.

Erik J. Olson (02:21)
You know, I would say the same, but there's not really any covering up this gray. I used to have hair just like Kevin when we first started out. Actually I didn't, but yeah. it's, been, it's been a good journey. There's been a lot of learning 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 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 me interviewing someone and he would have 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 larger organization. We own a couple of niche agencies 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.

Kevin Daisey (03:34)
Yeah, well, you know, a couple of things there folks. One, if you're a lawyer running your own firm, whether you're solo or running a bigger firm, you know, what Erik has done and what we've done together is, you know, he's backed out of, of working inside this company. Right. And so things you might be trying to accomplish working on the business and. know, some of the things that we had to put in place and learn.

the hard way. Sometimes we're telling people to tell us, but you just don't listen. And going back to the, you know, to all those things, mean, Erik could talk about a million different things on this podcast today, but we wanted to narrow it down to something that is, you know, tangible, something you can take action on, something that we feel we've done a good job with. And Erik's took it and ran with it and

Some of the stuff that we do that's unique, but back to like, you know, where we are, how we got where we are and how Erik'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 you read all the coaches you listen to. At just some point, it sinks in enough to where you actually do it. So it depends enough. So. So, yeah, Erik, you know what we're going to talk about today?

has to do with core values but you know I think that goes back to to the beginning of things you know where we we kind of set some core values and and that's stuck with us but elaborate on that if you if you want

Erik J. Olson (05:01)
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 401k benefits, all those kinds of things.

And, 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 or 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, a different podcast that as the founder, you are

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 is 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, whatnot. But at the very beginning, it's 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.

Kevin Daisey (08:46)
yeah. 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 Erik, Hey, this is why we're doing this or like whatever, or where we're going. but your folks, you know, that worked 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 while 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 why we're here. You get caught in the minutiae or meetings or the ups and downs of just employment or whatever. It's got to go back to like, 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 Hired by them fired by them, you know do your analysis of how things are going by those core values to make sure you know both parties on the same page and That they need to be or they want to be here and that we need them here and and it's okay if it's not You know aligned anymore. It's not always gonna be so

A lot of lessons learned out of that too. We've had our best folks, Erik, 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.

Erik J. Olson (10:14)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And we like you said, we hire by these core values, we fire by them. This is this is stuff that as entrepreneurs, everybody says to us, right? You read you pick pick up any of these books, and it's going to say that core value is super important. Hire by them, fire by them. 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.

Array Digital (10:54)
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 it to the phone, there are 24 seven virtual receptionists take the call and take them through a full intake process. So we never miss new business again. Now, Answering Legal has been at this for more than a decade.

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631-437-4803 and use special code DAISEY. That's my last name. D-A-I-S-E-Y. So go check them out and let's get back to the show.

Erik J. Olson (12:13)
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 you may have your own story, Kevin, but for me, 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, 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 what the problem was. I just say there was a problem and I responded to the problem. Well, after he was terminated, I took a couple of weeks to think about it and figure out 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, well, what are some core values that I want in this company? And core values as the entrepreneur, as the founder, 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. 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 at a particular core value, then I had set it a little bit higher. 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 1st, nine times out of 10, January 1st 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, that set the 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 are 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 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 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 those expectations and core values are where you start to set those expectations.

Kevin Daisey (16:15)
Well, yeah, I mean, to your point, you're setting them all along the way or after the fact, right? So now you have to take your existing team and those listening may have like, why don't you have 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 Erik did the 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. knew of them. Erich is the reason I got introduced to, okay, what are these core values? And when we met, he was already preaching them and working them into things. But I still felt like even then, they were kind of like, 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. We should we get into, but, but yeah, it's something that you have to set and 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.

Erik J. Olson (17:41)
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, 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 got 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 everyone in 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, on the 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 call you in a lie. This is a problem. We can't have that. Well, honesty, 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. Don't hide information. Be honest about it.

and be forthright about it. So actually, 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.

Kevin Daisey (20:01)
Well, transparency.

Yeah, absolutely. So every day, everyone listening, we have some things that you can put in place. What will you 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. Honesty, 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, like 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, you know, 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, you know, one of their colleagues, right? So it's not just Erik weeding out the bad apple, it's the team will bring it forward, right? And so, yeah, I think as we leveled this up, making the changes was necessary. And I would definitely, if someone says no, don't ever change them, 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. So.

Erik J. Olson (21:40)
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 the wholesale throw hours out and instill a whole new set of core values to us.

Kevin Daisey (21:51)
Yeah, I do.

Erik J. Olson (22:09)
That was a deal breaker and we rejected that. Now we're not doing that. We're sticking with our core values. We believe in these because it's core to our foundation.

Kevin Daisey (22:17)
Yeah, no, it's, know, they might've seen like, Hey, these are what worked 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, what's going on? You know, like this isn't, this isn't us. So yeah, good move on that part. So yeah, they have changed over time. I everyone to entrepreneurs organization, which Erik is a member of a great group. If you don't know who they are.

Erik J. Olson (22:30)
It's not us.

Kevin Daisey (22:42)
But we did a workshop. We're like, core values workshop. We have our core values. And this is early days. was like, honesty. And someone's like, honesty? That's a given. And we're like, And so that's, you know, we started to, that day we did a workshop and we came out with a 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 time. So yeah, let's go through each of our core values and talk about each one. And then we'll talk about how to put them to work.

Erik J. Olson (23:11)
That's right.

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. I remember those days where we like, how does this actually work? And 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 slash 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 going to 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. huh? 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 had 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, you know, 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 this honesty thing is close, but not quite. And we changed it to transparency.

Kevin Daisey (24:57)
Ha ha.

Erik J. Olson (25:06)
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, know, interestingly, it's for me, like that's the core core. Like that's a super basic core value. It's actually not cited a lot within our team.

Kevin Daisey (25:41)
you

Erik J. Olson (26:04)
Because it is just one of those basic tenants, kind of like honesty. It's a variation of honesty. It has to be there. It just has to. There's no negotiation. If you're not transparent, then I don't know how I can work with you.

Kevin Daisey (26:17)
Yeah, I mean, so we get into like how we use score values. And on a daily basis, you'll kind of get this. But yeah, when I when I when I give someone a transparency kind of, you know, points or what we're getting into in a minute or say, hey, this employee or the steamer was transparent, 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, Erik was transparent, it's usually some bigger situation. So it's not used as often, but it's stuff in 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. 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. And honestly, that's

coming from a web guy, I'd probably be like, yeah, I don't know. And then something in Erik, Erik was just like, we gotta tell him. And like, well, why? Like, no, no, let's not do that. So 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 going to maybe they're going to blow up about it. So, hey, by the way, client, your website was down from this time to this time. You know, 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 with that. After action reports, lessons learned, digging deep and saying, hey, what did happen?

not pointing fingers at people like, Erik'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 had 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 quick story on transparency. And. You know, it can be difficult for most people to want to.

to do naturally.

Erik J. Olson (28:46)
Yeah, naturally, right. And the natural tendency is to cover your tracks, CYA. But which is worse, the crime or the cover-up? Well, typically it's the cover-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.

Kevin Daisey (29:11)
No

Erik J. Olson (29:11)
If you're

Kevin Daisey (29:11)
way.

Erik J. Olson (29:11)
transparent, it's almost like you're disarming the other person when you say, hey, Kevin, I screwed up, man. You probably don't even realize it, but like, I screwed up. And now all of 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.

Kevin Daisey (29:40)
Yeah, 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.

Erik J. Olson (29:50)
Absolutely. Now, something that's a lot easier for us to see and put our hands on so that it'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 OK, 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 caveats in 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. Like I said, some companies just either they have a verbalizer or they don't actually live by that. For us, it's important to do both. So we live by quality.

Kevin Daisey (31:39)
Yeah, I think to add to that real quick is, I think lawyers listening, when you put out 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, eh, I'm going to send this over, 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, Erik, you're not sending that over, you? Because this isn't good. We need to fix this. And so we want folks to able to share and come forward and then go, hey, can you look at this for me? know, peer review it, whatever it may take. is the, do you feel good about the quality? You're going to feel good about it if you're ready to send it or not. So.

Erik J. Olson (32:27)
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. 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 a rate of digital to say, Kevin, this, 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 gotta 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 out quality work.

Kevin Daisey (33:36)
Which, you know, kind of ties in some transparency in there too. Hey, I'm being transparent here. We need to work on this. What's up next, Mr. Olson?

Erik J. Olson (33:40)
I'm

So yeah,

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. 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 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 big core value. 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.

Kevin Daisey (34:51)
Mm-hmm.

Erik J. Olson (35:08)
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 of days or a week, 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 and whatnot. mean, multiple companies and it can get very, very loud if I allow it to be loud. I haven't looked at it in hours.

Kevin Daisey (35:47)
Mm-hmm.

Erik J. Olson (36:02)
And it's not that I'm neglecting my team. 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, convey that way of work into the team. And hopefully we've all individually as staff members exhibited that in some regard.

Kevin Daisey (36:39)
Yeah, the powerless is powerful. So, it's been very useful for me. only do three, three items usually, but, it's, you know, it was still the same. If you got two hours to do something, you're to take two hours to do it. Right. Yeah. 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, 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 having an urgency with what our clients need, pushing deadlines, getting things done that are important first is massive. And 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 use that one quite often on a daily basis.

Erik J. Olson (37:26)
Yeah.

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 into 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, what do I need to do now to set up that thing that I want? Actually, I want to show you this. This is.

Kevin Daisey (38:03)
Show and

tell.

Erik J. Olson (38:04)
I mean, this is us in 2030 after we've hit our goal of a hundred million dollar agency. It's visualized, right? by doing these, in order to grow a company that big, 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 wheels in motion now in order to achieve those goals.

So urgency is incredibly important.

Kevin Daisey (38:32)
Yeah, if you're just putting out

fires of the day, guess what? Tomorrow's going to 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. So not that the fires aren't important, leave room. Yeah. Leave room for the fires and make sure you get your other stuff done. yeah. Awesome.

Erik J. Olson (38:46)
Yep. You gotta put out the fire.

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.

Kevin Daisey (39:14)
Love it.

What do we got next? What's next on the list?

Erik J. Olson (39:16)
Next,

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, 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.

Kevin Daisey (40:30)
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, we landed that big client. Of course we did. No, that's normal. We expected it. So I love that one. I use that one a lot. yeah.

Erik J. Olson (40:53)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's four. So transparency, quality. Yeah. 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.

Kevin Daisey (40:57)
That one's pretty easy.

Erik J. Olson (41:18)
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, and I, Kevin called Journey to $100 million. And we were talking about growing our agency. did the managing partners podcast where we're talking about getting into legal digital marketing. Like 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 it's just like they could take it or leave it, well then I'd prefer that you leave it. And 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 are 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.

Kevin Daisey (43:18)
Yeah, passion is huge. we used to have learning, I believe, or something like that. And we had a couple of different ones and passion kind of wrap them all up. It was more of your passionate. You're going to continue to learn. You're going to continue to work on it. You're going to continue 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.

Erik J. Olson (43:22)
That's right.

Kevin Daisey (43:42)
But yeah, if you're sitting here listening and you have paralegals that aren't passionate, or they're not trying to get better, they've been paralegal, then is it really something that they should be doing? know, depending on what 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, taught lawyers all day. I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to 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 passions. 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, so.

Erik J. Olson (44:43)
Yeah,

I punch it a clock. Yep. And that is one of the highest cited core values. 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 at Array Digital. have transparency, quality, urgency, winning, and passion.

Kevin Daisey (44:46)
Yeah, absolutely.

end

Erik J. Olson (45:09)
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. we, think all of us know, anyone who's in business 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. 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, hashtag passion. What I just did there is I awarded him some points and it's a point value between one and ten 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, 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, so it's 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.

Kevin Daisey (47:31)
Mm-hmm.

Erik J. Olson (47:37)
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, that's part of the slide deck and everyone claps and they do like, you know, hearts on the screen and all that stuff. Very important.

Kevin Daisey (48:00)
Yeah, no, it's great.

It's the coolest thing I saw, you know, when we got together. And it's not just that though. It's, yeah, we recognize someone on a monthly basis, but as we're talking right now, even if I to Slack, you'd see kudos coming in. so peers are recognizing other peers and they're given, hey, this person has done a good job.

Erik J. Olson (48:17)
Exactly.

Kevin Daisey (48:26)
And they tell the whole company that in the middle of the day, Hey, Erik 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, it's a daily. Yeah, go ahead.

Erik J. Olson (48:47)
Yeah. Actually, if you don't mind, 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. Jacobo 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, you know, what's great about it from my perspective is one, our team is self-reinforcing.

Kevin Daisey (49:25)
That's a big one.

Erik J. Olson (49:41)
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 don't, reject your entry because you did not set a core value. We've programmed that in. So what's great is, you 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.

Kevin Daisey (50:06)
You

Erik J. Olson (50:07)
But also as, as, know, as a CEO, you 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 a voluntary. I am voluntarily giving someone else like Kevin points. Even though that means I probably am I I'm I'm 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 a game theory kind of perspective, because he deserves it. And then and then that will get pushed into as input into the anual review So the anual 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 do his review, 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 an oopsie there and it cost us a client or cost us a bad review or something. 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.

Kevin Daisey (52:03)
Yeah. And you can see if they've been giving for, you know, giving kudos or receiving kudos, make sure they're participating as well. Right. So it's not just a wait. Is anyone siloed? Hey, they're not getting any, and they're not given any. That's potentially a problem. Right. I think one of the coolest things is you could pull any of our, of our team members off the street and they could actually tell you all of our core values.

Erik J. Olson (52:20)
That's right. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (52:29)
Like I'm confident in that. Maybe not the descriptions, but they could definitely cite what they are. So, because they literally use every day.

Erik J. Olson (52:37)
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 confidently they could off the top of their head name three out of five. And I'm okay with that. they'll 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 those ones that I just read to you were just from two hours ago.

several and there's probably half a dozen from today.

Kevin Daisey (53:08)
Yeah. And that's the crazy thing. Like, so think about if you have core values or a vision, your mission, if you just cite them once a year, like we use them on a daily basis. And Erik still believes that someone probably might miss one or so, like that aren't used as much, but literally that's how much you have to drill this into your team's head. Like you, gotta 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 you do. So you gotta have to continue to get this stuff in front of them.

Erik J. Olson (53:45)
Yeah. 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 one of the things 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, 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 that's time well spent. So again, just like you were saying, Kevin, it's incumbent upon the founder, the leader of the company to continuously repeat yourself. And you probably think 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.

Kevin Daisey (55:16)
Yep, 100 % transparency, hashtag.

Erik J. Olson (55:19)
Hashtag.

Kevin Daisey (55:19)
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 added a little extra thing to the top of that, so.

Erik J. Olson (55:36)
Yeah,

we had it. We had it. it. 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 inner 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, this is 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 that 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 employees in our

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 art. It's legit. What I want, this was one 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.

Kevin Daisey (56:56)
It's legit.

Erik J. Olson (57:15)
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, it's physical. I want them to receive it. For our remote employees, we've sent 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 awards and keep them forever. So it's yet another expense. But what better way to spend money than on what's valuable to your core values?

Kevin Daisey (58:02)
Yeah, it's really going over well and then Erik, mean, this is a really nice award dessert. They're not cheap. They're, I guess they're hand-blown or handmade glass and 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. mean, it's something, it's showing that, if you're not here at our companies anymore.

Erik J. Olson (58:24)
Eh, it's hardware.

Kevin Daisey (58:31)
Hey, I did this, I accomplished this. I showed this value, right? And I was recognized for it. So yeah, think these have been huge impact. The videos of the team around the country, 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 Erik said. And you bet people are excited when they get that award.

Erik J. Olson (58:55)
Yeah, and we just started doing in 2024. We'll probably update any 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.

Kevin Daisey (59:27)
Yeah, and then again, were, the cool thing is that they were put there by the other team members. So it's, 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.

Erik J. Olson (59:52)
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 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 they need to be recognized that they're doing a good job.

Kevin Daisey (1:00:23)
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, it, 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, they work beside them or they're in the office. So they, get, you know, extra, extra care or whatever, but this is completely the team.

seeing who they want to win. And so it's just really powerful, for sure.

Erik J. Olson (1:00:55)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Mr. Daisy. Couldn't have done it without you.

Kevin Daisey (1:00:56)
Good job, Mr. Oles.

Yeah.

Hashtag passion.

and winning.

Erik J. Olson (1:01:04)
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 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. All 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 our company leaders. the senior leaders here.

middle management and individuals to take care of the actual heavy lifting of doing all the things that were 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 happen to 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, the fundamentals and the results.

Kevin Daisey (1:02:19)
Yep. And if the team is living to those core values and we got the culture that we do, those things will be taken care of.

way to do it.

So 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 coup to 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 Erik.

Erik J. Olsen, how can they follow you and check you out if they don't currently?

Erik J. Olson (1:02:52)
Sure. So, yeah, again, my name is Erik J. Olson. It's Erik with a K, and Olson is spelled O-L-S-O-M-N, not N. I should know that.

I'm quite active on social media. So you'll find me on LinkedIn at Erik J Olson. Also, I hang out a lot on Instagram and and the new hot social media platform, which I probably shouldn't mention 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 Erik 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.

Kevin Daisey (1:03:53)
Excellent. Yeah. Well, again, if anyone's just reached out to me too, I'll have 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, and always looking for feedback too. So if you have a suggestion or something else, folks are always retarded me to say, Hey, what if you did this or out of that? That's 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. So, Erik, I appreciate you coming on, you know, back on the show. I'm not sure when I'll let you back on, but it's been pretty informative today.

Erik J. Olson (1:04:32)
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 doing here.

Kevin Daisey (1:04:40)
Hey, it's about the listeners and the guests. So, you know, learning, I learned along the way and obviously get to listen to what my guests have to share and just trying to provide value to everyone out there. So if you're running a law firm, know, this, 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 what 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. Erik J. Olson. I will see you probably this afternoon somewhere in the office. No problem. All right, everyone get out there, crush it. We'll see you soon.

Erik J. Olson (1:05:28)
Thank you, Kevin.

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