Rolan Reichel Troublemaker at Arrow
It’s 2022.
You’d think by now every small business with a computer or smart phone would be using social media to reach their market, but there’s a huge number out there who aren’t.
Solopreneurs are on the rise and with such speed, that we’re still settling on the right terms to describe them. In 2019, the SBA identified 50.7 million businesses as small, employing up to 499 people. But 81 percent of them were business owners with no additional employees who were lumped into the same category.
Source – entrepreneur.com, March 31, 2022
Small business owners already had difficulty dealing with social media marketing. Solopreneurs are likely even stretched thin with zero time to take on social media marketing.
A brilliant entrepreneur, Rolan Reichel, and his partners have come up with an elegant solution to this problem. The solution is Arrow. This from Rolan’s LinkedIn profile:
The paid ad ecosystem is crumbling, leaving in its wake a trail of failed businesses and undermining the whole eCommerce ecosystem. Arrow solves a real problem for millions of businesses which is finding and attracting the right users at the top of the funnel without paid ads. Patent-pending, powered by Artificial Intelligence, Arrow allows businesses to build the influence they need with content and improve sales and lead conversion by 10% or more without a social media manager, agency or paid advertising. (Emphasis mine)
Rolan came up in the same trajectory as digital advertising tools like Facebook, Hubspot, etc. The early need in the sector was to get media efficiency. Who needs such efficiencies? Huge advertisers like P&G who spend $350M per year. During those years, Rolan managed in the range of $400M in media sales with his teams.
Looking for their next move, Rolan and his partners found a grossly under-served market that doesn’t have the bandwidth or skills to go to market on social media. They’re just trying to keep the lights on.
Rolan and the team came up with a solution for non-marketers, the kind who want to spend $10 or $15 per day promoting their local businesses. They think there could be up to $100B sitting on the sidelines and they want to help put it to work to help small businesses.
Arrow’s north star:
“When small businesses win, we all win.”
One of my favorite moments in this interview is when Rolan and his team were ideating and realized the world doesn’t need another marketing platform.
So they built a browser extension. Genius!!
If you’ve used Grammarly, then you’re familiar with just how easy it makes things. You launch it and the software walks you through the rest. Personally, I’m still trying to get even a little comfortable with the Hubspot labyrinth.
This is a fun interview. Rolan has an easy laugh, and we cover a lot of ground. His experience and advice are perfect for software startups, small to large companies, and especially entrepreneurs. Throughout the interview, you’ll hear again and again how focused Rolan is on his audience of small businesses.