EntreLeadership - #88: Clate Mask—How to Grow a Business Without Chaos

Episode Date: January 12, 2015

Best-selling author Clate Mask, cofounder and CEO of Infusionsoft, joins the podcast to discuss how to successfully grow your business without sacrificing the lifestyle you deserve. He'll help you bring order to your business today. http://www.entreleadership.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charismatic, passionate, as integrity, humble, servant, faithful, inspiring, persevering, positive, flexible, driven. This is who we are that call ourselves leaders. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, And for leaders, happy new year. We are off and running in 2015. Hope your 2015 is off to a great start.

We're excited to walk along with you because you, as entree leaders, are the heartbeat of this great country's economy. Coming up, our feature conversation is with Clayton Mask. He's the author of Conquer the Chaos and the CEO of InfusionSoft, a company that we admire here. very excited about this conversation as we get going on the new year. Also, I'm going to recommend a book that I think everyone should read as you look forward to a new year. And we've got some emails from you, another segment we love to call Ken's Electronic Mail. We're giving away 50 books as well from Clayt Mask, the book, Conquer the Chaos. Stay tuned for that after our conversation. The book I want to recommend to you all. is called one word that will change your life. My good friend John Gordon, who you'll hear from in the coming months here on the podcast, co-wrote this book a few years ago with two guys by the name of Dan Britton and Jimmy Page. The concept is very, very simple. The idea of one word, one word that encapsulates what you want to accomplish in 2015.

The one word that from that one word spills out all the focus that you, you need for a coming year. Just think about how powerful that is. Now, this is not something that necessarily comes easy for everyone. Now, some of you, when you hear it already, you're going, this is the theme of my life this year. I know what it is. This is the word. You know, Dave Ramsey, who is our Fearlessly, talks all the time to our company about how words matter. And this little book, one word that will change your life, will walk you through a very simple step-by-step process for you to cull, if you will, all of the major themes, the first. The focuses of your year. You know inherently what is important to you right now. Well, what if you

could boil it all down into one word? And as you walk through each day, each week, each month of this year, you were able to keep that word front and center. This is powerful breakthrough stuff. And what I love about this book, as is true, by the way, with most profound ideas, is that it's simple. It's really interesting. There's another little thought for you, just a bonus takeaway. I have found in my life, and in studying and interviewing some of the great people of our day, that simplicity is the source of profound thoughts, profound actions, profound breakthroughs. So this is the book I want everybody to run out and get. I'm telling you, I think it's great. I don't care where you're at in your planning process, it's never too late,

to add this little book to your life. One word that will change your life. I've read it. I do it every year. I get a new word. By the way, I'm wrestling, Eric, the producer, with a couple of words right now. I'm okay with it. I'll get my word, but I think you need to get the book. One word that will change your life. By the way, the website is get one word.com. Get one word.com. Check it out. This is a book that I recommend everybody, and I think you should get it. Well, I'm really excited about our feature conversation of this So Clayt Mask, a new friend, and I love highlighting leaders that are doing something special every day. Now, as you know, we bring you a plethora of conversations on this podcast. Many times they're authors.

But I get really excited, nothing against the authors out there, when we get a practitioner. A practitioner who we admire. And here at Entree Leadership, the business, we admire InfusionSoft. Great story. You'll learn more about it, but Clayt is also the author of a great book, called Conquer the Chaos. We're going to give away 50 of the books after the conversation. But right now, let's get right to it. Fascinating conversation with Clayton. Well, Clay, it is great to be on the line with you. And I love the title of your book.

Conquer the Chaos, How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy. So let's start there, because running a small business is absolutely synonymous with chaos. and especially in those early days, which you understand, starting infusion soft from the ground up. So let's talk first about surviving chaos. We know it's there. How do we survive it? Yeah, you're right. It starts the moment you get a customer.

You know, we all start out our business thinking we're going to find this freedom, and it's going to be fantastic. And as soon as you get a customer and more customers and more customers, there's a ton of chaos, and then when you get employees, you've got real chaos. So you're right. it is almost synonymous with small business, and yet with some intentionality and some deliberate effort, there's definitely a way for entrepreneurs to conquer that. And that's what I speak to in the book.

I really kind of lay out three big things. The first one is to really remember your purpose, why you became an entrepreneur, and what success means to you. So that's number one. Remember your purpose. The second one is to practice what I call disciplined optimism, and that's really to maintain this undying belief. that you'll be successful while facing all of the brutal facts and challenges that come up in your business.

But that disciplined optimism is number two. And then the third one is to leverage systems to help you get organized, grow sales, and save time. If you'll remember your purpose, practice disciplined optimism and leverage systems. You can conquer the chaos. I like that. And I love talking with men and women like you, Clay, who started something from scratch, because that takes vision. And sometimes the vision isn't perfect, but yet there is a vision.

What have you learned about casting vision that you could share with our men and women who are listening here? Because it's such an important role. Yeah, I wish I could tell you that I had this great vision when we started the business. And the truth is, I can't tell you that. The truth is we really didn't have much vision other than we didn't want to work for somebody. We wanted to create our own opportunities. And what I've learned about vision is that the earlier you catch it, the more powerful your situation, the more likely your success.

and for us it took us a few years to really catch the vision. And sometimes people say, you know, there's something you wish you could have done differently. Yeah, I wish I could have caught the vision earlier because it took me about five or six years of working at it before I really got the vision and the big picture of what we're up to. But you did understand early on that there was something that should be and could be and thus led to InfusionSoft, correct? Yeah, we did. It was really, you know, it was really interesting.

And if you don't mind me, take in a second to tell you this kind of the, the challenges of the early days, I'll be happy to do that. I think that's really important. That's where I wanted to lead you is, you know, we're going to talk in a minute about what InfusionSoft does, but I love hearing the backstory because it all comes from you seeing a problem that you felt you could solve. Yeah. So when we were, my two partners and I, we came together and we were doing custom software

to help small businesses do sales and marketing more effectively using the power of the internet. This was 2002, and we just knew that there was a best. better way to do sales and marketing with what was happening on the internet back then. But it was all custom work. We were trading hours for dollars, and frankly, we were dying. It was very, very tough. I'd been to eight years of college, four years of undergraduate school, and four years of graduate school, and I got out of undergraduate school with no debt, but by the time my wife and I graduated with me with my graduate degrees and her with her degree,

we had about $100,000 of student debt, and I was motivated to get rid of that debt. I couldn't stand it. In fact, I was quite a follower of Dave's cash management system. We had our envelopes and all of those things, and we were big believers in Dave's stuff way back then. But I'll be honest that it was really tough to get the business started when we had that kind of debt, and it was really tough to be able to see anything out in front of me more than arms reach.

Everything was just right in front. You know, there's a reason why I couldn't create much vision for the company. So the three of us started the business. We were trading, like I said, hours for dollars, and it took us about six months before we said, hey, we've got to get to the point that we've got a product. And I'll spare you all the gory details because they were tough. You know, I frequently referred to it as the dark side of entrepreneurship, but it took about three years before we kind of got out of the white-knuckle survival stage

where we weren't sure if we were going to be around the next month. And those were tough times. And the cool thing is what turned out of the way. for us was we began to, and I know this sounds crazy, it sounds like, well, duh, genius, why didn't you figure that out? But what happened was we had been custom creating the software and gradually building it out, and I was the sales and marketing force for the company, and I was using our software to keep track of who we were talking with in the sales conversations, but it wasn't until I began

using the power of our automation, the automated follow-up that we do, That's when I began using that, that's when the business changed. And it was a powerful time for us, but it took nearly three years for us to really get that turn in the business to where we could begin to get past that survival stage. And I'm grateful to say that we were one of our early customers that made that work. All right. Now, what you're talking about here, Clay, is just growth. Simply put, it's just growth. And you write specifically about this.

In fact, one of the chapters or one of the sections here is three, grow or die. Chapter 3 is grow or die. And this is really good because I think we've all heard this. We've heard it said different ways. If you're not growing, you're dying. And I think there's a tremendous amount of truth there. In the book, you talk about four scenarios. I want to briefly set these up, and then I want you to walk our listeners through this

because I think this is a strong indictment, and I think we all need to hear it. Scenario 1, why entrepreneurs choose not to grow. You said scenario one is simply don't want to grow their business. Yeah. Scenario two, you're relying on referrals and repeat business. Scenario three, you believe you'll just figure it out. And scenario four, you do everything yourself manually. And you were just talking about that in your own life.

Let's go back to this. You don't want to grow your business. What are you telling us here? Yeah, what happens is many times entrepreneurs are afraid of what growth means for them. They're afraid in particular of the people management and the people, leadership challenges that they'll have to tackle if they grow. And so we've worked with tens of thousands of businesses very, very closely, and I've spoken to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, now of small business owners. And I poll them in large audiences, and I talk in private conversations

individually with entrepreneurs, and I find this over and over again. When you get right down to it, there's a fear and a concern of who you have to be to run a bigger business. And I don't mean a Fortune 500 company, or I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about a 10-person company or a 20-person company or 50-person company, and people find comfort in keeping their business very small because they don't have to grow. And so when I say it's that you don't want to grow, a lot of times people will say, well, of course I want my business to grow. That's not what I said. You don't want to grow. And when you don't want to grow as a leader, you can't grow your business. But this is a key point, Clay, it's that you want to grow, you want all the benefits

benefits of growth, right? More money, better life, all these things, stature, influence, whatever. But the fact is you don't want to face the big, ugly monsters behind the unknown doors. That's what we're really dealing with, correct? That's right. Oh, that's huge. Let me ask you this. You face those monsters, fair? Yep. How did you stand up, stand strong, and walk through the door? You know, we got to a point where I could see the purpose, the real purpose of our company. I could see why we needed to take on those challenges. And when you understand why you've got to do it, it becomes less difficult to step through

that door and take on those challenges. And so that's why I said earlier, if there's one thing I wish I could have done sooner or done differently, it would be that I could catch that vision of why the company exists. And I talk to entrepreneurs all the time. When you really understand your purpose, you know, why are you on this earth? Why are you doing this? Of all things you could be doing, why this, and you take that down to about five wise deep, when you understand that why, you're willing to walk through whatever door is there and whatever's on the other side, you'll take it on. Boy, that's good stuff. All right, let's move through these other scenarios. scenario, too. You're simply relying on referrals and repeat business. Is that just laziness? You know, what it is I've found is there's a certain investment mentality that many of the business owners who aren't growing have not picked up yet.

And by the way, I realize this is tough to hear. I've had a lot of intense conversations with entrepreneurs over the years. But when an entrepreneur doesn't specifically allocate dollars to invest in sales and marketing activities, programs, sales reps, They're really just banking on the good service that they offer being referred by their customers to others. Now, that happens sometimes, and certainly we should all pursue referral business. So I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue referral and repeat business. Of course we should. It's the least expensive new customers.

It's the lowest cost revenue we'll bring into our business, to put it simply. But it's a very poor way to try to grow your business, if that's your one trick. You've got to be willing to invest in sales and marketing. And if you're just relying on referrals and repeat business, you'll grow, but it'll be a slow growth. And you may not grow fast enough to survive the competition. All right. A scenario three. You believe you'll just figure it out.

This is hubris, is it not? Yes. What happens all the time in business, and we all know this, is we get into the grind, and we're just doing what we do. We're just in the business, working on it, doing it, and we don't spend nearly enough time intentionally planning our outcomes. And the simple way to put it is, if you don't write down your goals, you're not going to get to them.

But it's so much more than that. You know that. I know that. And yet, if business owners would just do that, they'd be in a pretty good place. But they have this belief that, oh, you know, we'll just kind of figure it out as we go. Well, I firmly believe that entrepreneurship and indeed life is an active intentionality. It is all about what we intend to create. and if business owners will take the time to actually put out there and put on paper what they want to have happened, they can go create it.

But if they just go through the motions and say, we'll figure it out gradually, they're going to find themselves a decade, two decades, three decades later, not having accomplished nearly what they had hoped. All right. And finally, scenario four, and you touched on this a little bit as you told some of the story of the early years, but I think it's good to hit it again. You do everything yourself. Talk to those folks who are still doing everything themselves and work. Yeah, there's two parts of this. You do it all yourself because you've convinced yourself that you can do it better than others, or if you haven't convinced yourself of that, you have this sneaking suspicion in the back of your mind that others are going to fail, and therefore you don't delegate, you don't relinquish responsibilities, you don't give ownership to others. And when you do that, you've got a nice big ass of Superman on your chest, but you're not going anywhere. You can only do so much yourself, and the business cannot grow if you, as the business owner, don't learn how to delegate. Now, a cousin to this of how to replicate the productivity, because one way to do it is to hire, but another way to replicate productivity is to stop doing things manually and start doing them automatically.

A simple way, for example, was my story about selling and not using automated follow-up. As soon as I began to use our software to send personalized automated follow-up messages to prospects and customers at the right time, we dramatically increase the sales in our business, and that's a way of scaling the manual efforts that, happen all the time in small business. One of the things you write about in the book, Conquer the Chaos, is building emotional capital. Again, a phrase that all of us understand, but what does that look like in your world, Clayt, in your culture, building emotional capital?

This goes right back to the point about the optimism that you've got to have. If you are going into a situation running a business and you're just beaten down mentally, emotionally, that business is not going to survive. And so we talk about constantly building your capital bank account, your emotional capital, so that you can withstand the challenges that come. How do you do that? Well, you read the success stories of your customers. You read positive comments that your employees have made.

You remind yourself of the accomplishments that you've had, literally going back, reviewing the prior week, month, quarter, and evaluating the wins that you've had. Most business owners are so busy taking on the next challenge, we've forgotten the things that we've accomplished, the great things we've done. And unless we feed our minds and our emotional bank account with the accomplishments that we've had, we will actually go emotionally bankrupt and we'll end up killing the company. So good. Well, Clay, one of the reasons we're excited to have you on this podcast and have a conversation about this,

is not just because you're an author. We have lots of authors on. But the reality is you wrote a book out of your experience. And I want to talk about Infusion Soft. We've touched on it throughout our conversation here. But how is InfusionSoft helping small businesses? Because as you know, Clay, we're passionate here at Entree Leadership about small business. And Ronald Reagan said that small business is the conscience of our economy.

And I believe these men and women who are running small businesses are the heroes of our economy. How does InfusionSoft seek to make their lives easier and thus creating more jobs and fueling the economy? Yeah, I love that. I wholeheartedly agree with both of those statements, and our big why, why we do what we do, is to help small businesses succeed, but more specifically to make it just a little easier to grow a business and have the successful business

and the successful life that you want and make it a little easier to attain that freedom to be able to have the time and the money to do the things you want to do. It's the reason so many entrepreneurs start the business in the first place, and yet it becomes so incredibly elusive. So our purpose, the reason we exist is to enable small businesses, small business owners, and their key employees who feel it very much the same way to actually attain those high-level

benefits of what they're after in terms of time, money, and freedom. So how we do that is we help small businesses succeed with sales and marketing automation software. We know that sales and marketing automation software is a game changer. When our customers put this in place in their business, they get organized, They grow sales, and they save time so they can have the business and the life they want. All right, I want to ask you about automation. I think we all hear that again, but I like to dive in. How does it look when you help these businesses automate sales and marketing?

What does that look like on the ground? It's a great question, because automation can be this big word. What does that mean? Isn't how big companies do? No, it is – I'm going to give you some specific examples. We like to talk about personalized automated follow-up, because the benefit that a small business have is the relationship, and yet if there isn't personalization to the follow-up messages that you offer to your prospects and customers,

it falls flat. It doesn't work. And so what we do is we help our customers build that relationship through personalized automated follow-up, and basically it can take on a number of different images, but here's a few of them to give you an example. So somebody comes to your website, has some, request some information, fills out a form on the site. And when our customers have InfusionSoft in place, it automatically sends the information to the customer with a personalized message about it. It will automatically

send a follow-up a few days later or on whatever interval our customer wants. It will stay in touch with that customer, not just saying, hey, did you get the information? Did you get the information? But adding valuable information and educating the individual so that the message was received. that is information and follow-up work that's usually done by phone calls and by emails, by a busy business owner or employee who only has about 39 other things to do. And so guess what? It doesn't happen. So that's an example of a new lead that comes into the business and the appropriate personalized follow-up for new leads.

You can think of a similar scenario with a new customer that comes into the business and having a really elegant, delightful welcome process to the new customer that occurs. in an automated way, or perhaps it's automatically following up on collection. These are all manual labor-intensive jobs that need to be done by somebody but frequently get neglected when a busy business owner and her employees don't have the time to do this follow-up work. We know that when they'll put personalized automated follow-up in place, it's an absolute game-changer for them.

So I hear automated follow-up come out of your mouth, but I'm a simple guy, Clay. So I'm hearing that, and I'm thinking it's really, InfusionSoft helps small businesses enhance and scale communication. That's exactly right. I mean, that's what you've got to understand. See, that's huge because it just gives them those extra arms and enhances it. It's all well done. They customize it, and then you have a system that fires it out so that it's scalable. That's really what it.

And communication is the lifeblood of the small business. Am I correct? You nailed it. Well, I've got to tell you, this is good stuff. The book is Conquer the Chaos, How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy. He is Clayte Mask, CEO for InfusionSoft. He's a friend of Entree Leadership and thus a friend of you, entrepreneurial leaders out there. Clay, this was really, really enjoyable.

We really appreciate you hanging out with us. And by the way, we're about ready to give 50 books away, and so I want to thank you for that much. Thanks so much, Ken. This has been a great time, a lot of fun. Really enjoyed talking with you. All right, we want to make sure that you can learn more about InfusionSoft because they really are a company that their entire purpose is to help you communicate better with the important people in your life, and that is your clients.

You can do that at infusionsoft.com slash about. Infusionsoft.com slash about. And we're also very grateful to Clayte and his team at InfusionSoft and their publisher. They're going to give away 50 of the Conquer the Chaos books. to do this. You know how you do it. All you got to do is tweet the following phrase, and you are entered to win. The phrase to tweet is the at-on-Trey Leadership Podcast conquers chaos. The at-ontre leadership podcast conquers chaos. Tweet it, and Eric, the producer will be trolling the internet, and you'll be entered to win, so stay tuned for that awesome opportunity. All right,

folks, it is time for one of my favorite segments on the Entree Leadership podcast. Your emails, like to call it, Ken's Electronic Mail. Ken's Electronic Mail. You've got mail. I love these two emails that I'm going to read today because they're from young entrepreneurs. I love talking to younger leaders because I know that in my early days of entrepreneurial adventures, excuse me, ventures or adventures, that works.

There were men in my life who were much older than me who came in and really helped my trajectory. So here we go. First email is from Casey. And Casey says, Has application come easy and natural to you? Or did you have to make a conscious effort to apply what you learned? Well, first let me say, Casey, great question, and thanks for sending it. This is an interesting answer here. Because when I first read your email to me in this question, I was thinking to myself,

well, you know what, it's easy sometimes and it's difficult other times. Okay, so Casey's going, thanks for that crazy wisdom. But here's what I mean by that. I have found that application is really easy when it is fitting into my natural personality, wiring, or my strengths, which is why, again, it's so very important. So I'm going to use this opportunity to make sure that you know who you are. Because there are times of life where I've learned something, and it just became really easy for me to apply. And the reason it was easy for me to apply is because it naturally fit into my wiring.

right for instance it was in my giftedness my strengths and then also it was easy for me to do because I was wired that way what I have found so that's simple so you're going to find at times that applying things is really easy when it fits your wiring where it's difficult is where it's maybe not a natural proclivity of yours so this is where we've got to create habits I recommend that you go back and listen to the conversation with Charles Duhigg read the book by Charles because this is where it's been tough for me to apply what I have learned, where I've had to create a new habit. So I've had to change total perspective, and that takes discipline.

And so I'll give you the tip. You've got to start doing it and practicing it. You've learned something you want to apply. There's no easy way to do it other than just cold turkey. Jumping in the water, cold, and figuring out how to do it. I think you've got to practice it. You step back and look at it because it's going to be unnatural. But the more you do it, two things happen.

to Charles Duhigg's wonderful research in the power of habit, it just becomes something you do. And everything else moves around that new habit. But the second thing is you actually get good at it because you see how awkward, how bad you are to start. So that's my thoughts on application. Thank you, Casey, for the email. Second email came from Jorge. I love this email. Jorge is from San Juan, by the way, Eric the producer, the international podcast.

Jorge says, what would you do differently if you were 25 years old? again. Well, I'll tell you what I would do. I would be more purposeful and more intentional to figure out what my sweet spot is. It was about that time in my life where a mentor shared with me the truth that absolutely blew me away, which is that everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot lies at the intersection of your greatest strength and your greatest passion. Let me say that again. Your sweet spot lies at the intersection of your greatest strength and greatest passion. And he shared that with me, but it took me about six or seven years to really, truly apply that. This fits beautifully with the other email that we got from Casey. And I would have

applied it sooner, which means I would have gotten crazy hyper-focused about finding my sweet spot, because here's the deal. The question comes from Jorge, who's a young entrepreneur? And by the way, being an entrepreneur does not necessarily put you in a specific area. It just means that you are entrepreneurial. So you would do well to find your sweet spot. What do you? What do you? you do, Jorge, better than anything else that you do? You have several strengths, but which one of them is absolutely the leader in the clubhouse? You do it better than anything else that you do well. Then what makes you come alive? I'll never forget, and I'll share it with you again. I love the story. David Copperfield. Oprah Winfrey once asked him, how did you figure out that magic

is what you're going to do with your life? By the way, David Copperfield is the most successful entertainer in history. He sold more than $4 billion in tickets and counting. He simply said, I love stories my whole life, but I was really good at magic. And as a kid, when my parents bought me a couple illusional tricks, I realized that was really, really good. But I knew that I loved stories. So I figured out when I was a teenager that I was going to spend my life telling stories with my magic. He loves stories more than anything else, but he was really great at illusions.

That's the magic. So Jorge, what I would do at 25 is get laser focused on finding my sweet spot, the intersection of my greatest strength and greatest passion. Hey, I'd love to hear from you. If I can't answer it, I'll get somebody on our team who will. You can do that by emailing us. Podcast at entreleadership.com. That's podcast at entreleadership.com.

I'm on Twitter at Ken Coleman. Of course, the mothership is at Entree leadership. To keep growing, check us out online, Entreeleadership.com. Click on all access. This is our monthly community where you can grow intentionally. Folks, that's going to do it for our very first podcast. of 2015 on behalf of our producer Eric Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.