The One With Clate Mask And Scott Martineau - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #145

I'm dean jackson.

He's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hello.

This is Joe Polish, founder of the Genius Network and Piranha Marketing, And I'm here with a couple guys I've known for a long time, Klate Mask and Scott Martineau. They're the founders of a company called infusionsoft, which is a pretty awesome company. I've been a client since you first founded in 2001. So how are you guys doing?

Doing great.

Fantastic.

Awesome.

Okay, well, here's the deal. For this. This video, we're gonna actually show you some of infusionsoft, Some of the company, some of the employees, some of the headquarters, because that's where we're at. We're in one boardrooms. But first off, what is infusionsoft? What do you guys actually do? What's a quick bio of who you are?

Yeah, we're the leading sales and marketing software company for small businesses, and we are the only company that was really built to help small businesses manage the entire marketing and sales process all in one software solution.

Okay, so when you say you are the top, I mean, do you have competitors that would say that too, or you literally. That's your position in the marketplace?

Well, there are a lot of people who claim to serve small business owners, but there's nobody that does it.

Yeah, I think it'd be safe to say that our competitors would say infusionsoft's the leader. We've been doing it a long time, and we've been doing it before anybody realized that this sales and marketing software for small businesses was like a category that, you know, was a real legitimate category. So we don't think we're bragging when we say that. We're just saying we're the leaders in sales and marketing software.

Yeah.

For small business.

You have a large company here. How many employees do you currently have at the time that we're doing this video?

Got 450. Yeah. Okay.

How many? How many clients?

About 15,000 and about 55, 60,000 users on the system.

Okay, so you're growing like gangbusters, too.

Big time growing more than 50% per year.

Yeah.

That's awesome. Well, let's talk about what does infusionsoft do? Who's it for? Who is it not for?

Well, what it does is it helps entrepreneurs and small businesses. It helps them to find, get, and keep customers in a systematic way. Basically helps you to take the holistic approach to the sales and marketing process and put it into one system instead of Having all these bits and pieces. A contact management database for this or Excel for that, and constant contact for this, and a shopping cart that does this. There's so many pieces of a sales and marketing system, and most of the people out there are trying to do.

It with.

Different pieces of software, different pieces of, I mean, shoot, sometimes it's calendars and spreadsheets and all sorts of stuff. And so we give you one system to run all your sales and marketing so that you can do a better job, more efficient job, of getting customers and serving them and generating revenues over the life cycle of that customer.

Okay, so what I wanted to accomplish during our conversation and what I want the people that are watching this and listening to it to get out of this is a better understanding of how they actually can automate. Because in marketing, we always talk about marketing as the ultimate leverage, which it is because if you rely on a sales team to physically go out and talk to people, either on the phone or in person, you know, how do you replicate that person and then follow up? You know, it makes for a good seminar speech. People write books about it, but frankly, most people kind of suck at follow up and they don't really do it. And until you build it in to where it becomes just part of what you do, every person that comes into your business, into your company and having a strategic system, you know, even people use the word system and they throw it around, although I don't think many people even understand quite what that means. So I was your second customer, you know, using infusionsoft way back when. And back then, us marketers, in order to, we had the, you know, kind of Frankenstein a lot of different things together in order to even have follow up. And so I've always thought of infusionsoft as not a software or a CRM, which it is. But I've thought of it as something that just kept track of everything for me and takes a lot of complexity and kind of automates it. So I'd like to get your just perspective of why companies fail because they don't have something like this, even though infusionsoft does this. It's one thing about having infusionsoft, but it's another to even understand why you would want to have something like this. So if you could talk to that.

Yeah. So small businesses, I think, have a unique challenge because they don't have an entire marketing department whose job it is to go and make sure everything is followed up on, or in some cases they don't have a sales team, some do, obviously. But infusionsoft helps the small business owner who really needs to have something kind of do that for them. The small business owners are notorious for knowing that, for example, they should be following up with every one of their leads, but they feel helpless. They've already got three or four hats they're trying to wear and all their employees are tapped. And so we found that especially for the small business owner, they need to automate things. So as a simple example would be how many businesses have a website and they've got tons of traffic or depending on, doesn't matter how much traffic, some traffic coming, some are more than others, but their traffic is coming. Reading stuff on their website, they're not ready to buy. But there's no lead capture in place whatsoever. We help to automate that process. So we'll help people put a simple form up online to capture a lead. For some businesses that is massive amounts of automation. You know, for us that's just kind of like that's table stakes. You gotta be doing basic lead capture and there's simple things like that, keeping their databases organized and segmented. You know, for a lot of people that's a lot of manual work because they've got six or seven different systems. We help put that in one place. And for example, when somebody comes in off one of those opt in forms on the website, let's automatically tag and segment that person so that later we can easily go find all the people who filled out this form on the website. So there's some simple examples of automation and you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and you have businesses that are literally turnkey. The entire business is completely automated. You have initial leads being captured. Like we just talked about full and complex automated follow up marketing where if the person does action a this follow up is going to take over and happen automatically. If they don't, this other thing will happen. The orders are taken automatically and when somebody buys more follow up happens. You know, the whole entire business can be automated and you've got everything in between. You know, business owners just. There's something very addictive about automation. Sometimes it's hard to understand at first, you know, but when they, when they get a little taste of it, they just want to automate more. You know, it means time. That's probably the biggest thing. And I'm reclaiming time.

Yeah. And you know, you said, well, why do, why do small businesses struggle? I can't remember exactly the way you asked the question, but something like, why do people need to do this, why do they struggle? We can talk about systems and we can talk about automation and how that saves time and all of that's true. But if you want to just get real for a second and say, why does a small business have a hard time generating the customers they need to generate and getting the revenue they need to get to be able to make payroll, or heck, if you're one person, just being able to do the things that you want to do in life, running your business as a solopreneur, it comes down to this. It is difficult. Business is so chaotic and so fast paced and it's so reactive. There are always fires and things you're dealing with. And in entrepreneurship and small business, if you don't have an effective way to follow up with every prospect, customer and partner that you work with, then you're just wasting money, you're wasting time, you're wasting opportunity. And this happens all the time. It happens with prospects, it happens with existing customers who you feel like they're this loyal client, and then you find out that they buy a product or service that you offer from one of your competitors. Well, why? Because you didn't follow up with them. You don't stay in touch. You don't actually have a way to consistently and reliably be in communication with that person and remind them of what you do and how you can add value and how you can help them when you peel it all away. The name of the game, following up with prospects, customers and partners. How do you do that if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have a system? Well, I'll tell you how you do it. You either do it with a bunch of manual labor or you don't do it. And it's in the back of your mind and you're wishing you would do it. That's how most people deal with it. And what we do is say no. Put it into one system and automate the crap out of it so that you can have that follow up happening. And you move prospects and customers and partners along the path that you want them to follow and they will turn into customers and revenue and opportunities for you.

Right, Right. And you know, people have asked me continuously over the years because they know I've been using infusionsoft for a long time. And what's funny is I myself never go and use it. My company uses it, my team uses it. I think part of business maturity is realizing that if you're not doing this stuff, it's not going to do it itself. You're just not going to wake up one day and it's magically going to happen. There are certain efforts and certain conditions that if you want them to exist, you need to set certain things up and, and someone can go through trying to piece it all together themselves, which not only they're never going to do it the way that you guys have set it up, but they're also going to go through tremendous amounts of stress and anxiety. And when I was hearing you talk about how people follow up, I was sitting thinking about just personal relationships. I mean, if you look at marriages, you look at relationships with children, you look at the very busy entrepreneur that many cases can be just so committed to their business and in some cases a slave to their business. They're trying to wear all these hats and they're having a hard enough time making sure that their partner or their spouse feels that they're getting enough attention, or they're feeling guilty about spending time with their kids. But then they have this thing called a business that needs to produce income for them and that they're supposed to just figure out, not only be able to do, it's hard enough to do with a single person who's important to you in your life versus if you don't automate that in your own business. I mean, give me a break.

You want to hear a funny spin to this? We have customers who have talked to us about automated follow up campaigns they've put in place in infusionsoft to communicate with their spouse, with their kids, like to send them gifts and to do, you know, direct mail pieces essentially is the way we would think of it in business. Right. But to actually send out stuff, send cards do different things and they actually use infusionsoft to do some of that stuff. Because if you don't actually, if you don't think about some of those things, it's sad, but true. You're so busy in business that sometimes you just miss really key important things. And so whether it's something as simple as a birthday card program for your customers or your kids, or it's actually something more substantial or meaningful, we actually have in rare cases, customers that will use our software to help build relationships with their friends and family members, which is pretty funny and maybe a little sad.

I'll tell you this though. I mean, if it is something that you can automate and it will take one activity that you're leaving up to human memory, which I would never recommend leaving anything up to your memory to do, if you can, why not automate everything out of your life because that's how you create a frictionless situation because there's always going to be friction. So I don't want to paint this picture that this is easy and a lot of things too. I want to bring this up. What are the negatives of if you decide as a business owner you're going to go through this automation process? What are some of the pains that you're going to have to go through in order to get the most value out of it?

I think people are really afraid of feeling impersonal to their prospects and customers. You know, we've all had enough experiences with people who are following up with us in a very non personal, non personalized way, you know?

Right.

So. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of great strategies for doing that better. I think, I think that the idea that every single relationship in the business is completely automated, I don't think that that ever really happens. But what it does allow is it allows people to free up their time so they can spend more time on the most meaningful part of the relationships, you know, So I think that's one of the fears of over automation, for sure.

Yeah. And I think one of the things, if you're not a software guy, and truth be told, I'm really not a software guy, Scott's much more of a natural, soft, sort of an early adopter of technology than I am. I'm much more of just kind of a pragmatist.

I love you two, go head to head.

But here's the thing. It's kind of scary to put this stuff in place, not just because of the imperial nature, but here's reality. If you're not kind of a born systems thinker, which most entrepreneurs are not, you don't really have the natural knack of thinking, okay, what do I want to have happen in this process on day one, I want this to happen on day three. This and on day seven, on day 16. So here's the point. You have to actually sit down and think through your process. Bill Gates is famous for saying, I can't automate something where there's no process. So entrepreneurs have to recognize you've got to actually put the process in place. And that can be a scary thing for people, especially if they're having to try to do it from scratch. And so one of the things, having done this for 11, nearly 12 years now, we help you so you don't have to start from scratch. And that's really a hard thing that entrepreneurs have to get over. They have to realize, okay, well, how am I going to actually do this? But. But how's that going to work in my business? And they have to stop and think through it. And without a little coaching and a little help and some preparations, so they're not starting from scratch. It's a daunting thing.

Yeah, it is. And I would say that most people, they don't delegate any of this. They sort of hope that it doesn't have to be done and they kind of abdicate it at best. And they don't. They just flat out ignore it. I mean, any of us could walk into any business that, for one, isn't using effective marketing and automation and just see where they're struggling and where they're not leveraging the relationships. Because if you're going to be a good marketer, that means you actually have to relate to people. You have to communicate to people. You know, what me and Dean Jackson talk about on I love marketing is, you know, there's three units of the business. There's the before unit. What you do to get business is the during unit unit, once you start engaging with them. And then there's the after unit. After someone has given you money. How do you deliver worldcast service to these people? How do you orchestrate referrals to your clients? And I could never do. I could never reach the thousands of clients that we reach on a daily basis in some cases, without all of this setup in infusionsoft, I mean, it would be virtually impossible. I mean, if I was given all the money in the world, I just couldn't do that without a system set.

Up to do it.

So the question is, do you want to go out and figure that system up on your own, or do you want to go to crazy guys like you that actually one day decided that we can probably piece all of this stuff together. And one of the things I talked to you about, Clay, is we were doing a short interview a few weeks ago, and you asked me about my experience with infusionsoft, and I had to fit this into this videos.

Whatever you came up was so good that you wanted to make sure we got it.

Just the Joseph Campbell quote. I want to say that again because I never figured out how to use a Joseph Campbell quote in. So, you know, it's. I have to do it again. But, you know, he had this great line where he's like, the. The cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

Yeah.

And it's scary to actually learn this stuff. It's scary to actually deal with trying to figure it out and thinking through your process. But to me, what's more scary is the lost revenue, the continual confusion, the struggle that someone's going to go through if they, you know, everyone wants this wonderful business with happy clients and communication and not pissing people off. But if you're not, you're either going to stay very small so you can just manage this or you're going to actually grow in leverage because you've actually built in something that allows you to replicate and scale and you can't do that. You just can't do an effective job marketing if you're not willing to set up those follow up systems. You guys have actually spent an enormous amount of time and have thousands of some of the best marketers in the world that use infusionsoft that you interact with on a daily basis and you learn what they do, how they do it and you build systems to allow them to do stuff better. But the great thing is you see everything infusionsoft. You know what I tell people that will listen is that you're not getting a CRM here. That's part of what you're getting. But what you're getting is you're getting all the best recipes on the planet. This is like a big giant recipe book of how to run a successful business. And you know what? It's not going to do everything.

We might steal that from you.

That's pretty good.

It is.

It's a recipe book.

That's exactly right.

And in your whole thing about process, everyone, even people that are failing, they probably don't think of it this way, but they have a process of failure. They're not doing this. They're not doing this. They're not following up here. They're not following up here. Guess what? They don't have enough money in the bank. They're not tracking things. And if you don't the whole management thing, that which is measured, you can manage. And if you don't measure it and track it, then how do you know? I'm done talking now.

I love the recipe book. The recipe book thing, you're dead on. It's awesome.

I think that when you came on board that was the wild west of the small business marketing. You and some of your other marketing, the other marketing experts in the different fields were just blazing the trails.

Right?

And even the people that were learning from you I think still had to do a little bit of trailblazing. But it's a new world now. I think the scariness of that challenge I think has just gone way down because you got businesses in every industry who have set up these automatic marketing systems, you know, and it's nice.

We have.

One of the things we've invested a lot in is a campaign template library so that you literally have all of this whole follow up system bundled together. And so there might be one to go get referrals, another one to follow up with leads on a website. And you can just. Our customers love being able to take those and just plug them in.

Right?

Yeah. And I was just going to say something. It's scary to do this process automation, this follow up automation. It's scary to do it, It's a little bit scary to do it if you're a marketer. But marketers tend to, they see the benefits of it. They're a little bit more longer term thinking. Just the nature of marketing is such that you, you develop a relationship and you cultivate that relationship over time before you necessarily go for the sale on day one. And a lot of entrepreneurs are much more sales oriented where they go for the sale on day one than they are marketing oriented where they recognize there's a need to cultivate and nurture. And so for marketers, the concept of putting together this kind of multi step communication campaign is a little bit more natural. It's still a little bit scary, but for the regular Joe, the average Joe that is not a marketer, it's really scary. And what we found, it's been fascinating for us what we found over the last 10 years or so we've seen our customer become more and more of just an everyday entrepreneur that wants to be successful in their business. Whereas in the early days it was like we were working with the best marketers. And we still do, make no mistake. But when you're bringing on 6, 7, 800 new customers a month, they're not all the best marketers in the world. Right. So we see two really interesting things. One, we continue to get just great wisdom over the years of marketers and how they apply these campaigns in these follow up campaigns in their business to be successful. And then two, we see how the average consultant, speaker, plumber, attorney, CPA is becoming more, it's becoming more feasible for them to take this kind of technology and this kind of marketing wrapped up into what we call a follow up campaign and put it in place in their business. And so it's really fun to see. It's awesome for us to watch. Now we're over 50,000 users using the software and getting to See them do stuff that, frankly, 10 years ago was like marketing ninja work for people. And it's becoming much more mainstream, and that's really, really satisfying.

Well, I make the joke that I used to pay you guys probably $10,000 for stuff that you can now get for, like, 50 bucks. My pay should be the benefit of all of these people that are watching this, that are new. Well, so when someone comes in to do this, aside from giving them the platform and. And let me say this, the platform can help them generate leads, follow up with leads, track conversion, track revenue, track referrals, track vendors, everything, and all the customer follow up.

You know, a new customer comes into your business, how do you treat that customer? Well, we all want to treat that customer with love and care and appreciation. Well, how about you think through one time what you'd like to have happen with that customer during their first week? 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, whatever you want to call it, and program that to happen automatically so that your customer has a wow experience when they come into the business. And then likewise for customers that have been there a long time, what's the process for following up with them and staying in touch and making them aware of other products and services that you offer and checking in with them to see if life has changed and there's a new need for them? All of those things can and should be automated. Yeah.

And you've got. I mean, I just happen to have this. You've got all kinds of stuff. This is this fancy lifecycle marketing planner. So someone gets this tool, this system, the CRM, called infusionsoft. But what they also have access to is you help them think this through. And so that's what I really want to point out, because I will constantly have conversations with people. They're like, well, you know, there's this other simpler, you know, database, or there's this other company that we can use. And I'm like, well, how long they've been in business? Well, they're, you know, they're pretty new. And I mean, how many, you know, the world's leading marketers use them? You know, a couple. I'm like, well, so the top people in this business use infusionsoft. So is that because there's no other options? Well, yeah, in some cases, that's the case. The other thing is that you guys have all of these best practices, as I'll refer to them, going back to the recipe thing. So when someone becomes a client, what do you provide them in terms of teaching them and helping Them do what it is they need to do and want to do better. Because a lot of people are not aware of just how much coaching, training and support exist at this company. And after we're done chatting here for a bit, I'll walk around with Scott and he can show some of these real people that are here to see this is not some dude running a software company out of the closet.

Yeah, do you want to talk about that?

So every customer that signs up is assigned a dedicated success coach and they're basically consulting with this customer. They'll take them through the lifecycle marketing system and they'll ask questions about how are you attracting traffic and capturing leads and nurturing the prospects and converting sales all the way through to getting the customer on board and wowing them. And that process really helps to uncover the biggest need and the biggest place where the business owner can put their focus. And so for some it might be we're going to put a lead capture system in place and a basic follow up system to make sure that we're following up with these leads that are just getting wasted right now. For others, they may have a big list of customers and so they're going to take one of the new customer campaigns or an upsell campaign and put that in place. And we just found that for a lot of business owners, the idea of coming and adopting software and having to think through these systems, that's a little too much. And so it costs a lot. It's a big investment to have all of our success coaches out there, but it really helps the small business owner to put that strategy in place.

Yeah, we have to say software, we're not just about software. We're about so much more than that. Our purpose is to help small businesses succeed and it's not to sell them software. That's not our purpose. Software is the central part of what we do. But around the software we put the consulting that Scott's talking about, the training events, networking opportunities, all kinds of things where customers come together to learn and grow and develop their business. What we do is we help entrepreneurs succeed. That's what we're about. And it just so happens that we do that primarily through sales and marketing software. But if you've been to InfusionCon or you've been to one of our training events or one of the monthly regional events that we do, you know, we're helping small businesses be successful and that comes down to understanding the sales and marketing process better, the follow up process better. And of course we have a system that they can use to do that. But that's really kind of at the heart of it. There's a whole bunch of stuff that goes around the software to help small businesses have the tools that they need to be successful.

Another big component too is that the coaches will help the new small business owner put together kind of the dashboard, their key reports, you know, so they know. They finally can know. Actually, we generated this many leads in this month and those leads turn into this many customers, this much revenue. And for a lot of people, these are their stats. They're not really watching. They're just. They're watching the bank account. That's an important stat that everybody watches. But we provide some other ways to see what's working and what's not.

So what will infusionsoft not do in case there's this expectation if someone comes in and, you know, they think it's gonna just run their whole company for them or whatever, what can it not do?

You know, it's not accounting software. It's not. Although it, you know, charges credit cards and, you know, you can, it does, you know, that aspect of kind of receivables, if you want to think of it that way. But it's not to replace QuickBooks or something like that. It's not project management software like Basecamp or something like that. It's not that. It's really not intended to be kind of the back office part of small business. It's sales and marketing software. It's the software that you use to attract customers and attract leads and convert those leads into customers and then continue working with those customers over the life cycle and, and get the most out of those customer relationships. So it's customer management software, sales and marketing software.

Gotcha. Well, we all are friends with Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, and I have a lot of conversations with him and I'll actually put this video on our podcast that me and him do called 10x talk. And several years ago, Dan talked about in business, if you think of having a tool belt, a toolbox and a tool shed, a tool belt are the tools you use every day, like a cell phone, a computer, a CRM, a software, a tool. You know, a tool box would be something that you use frequently, like a monthly client newsletter as an example. And then a tool shed would be special need. And if you're going to use a computer every day, you should use the very best computer that you could use because you're using it every day. If you have a cell phone or any sort of technology device that's a pain in the butt. I mean, get the very best thing if you're going to use it daily and if it's something that you use every once in a while, I mean, you can rent it, you can lease it, whatever. But when it comes to your clients, when it comes to interacting with all of these people, this is something that you actually, this is so important. Why, if you want to have the most successful business, like, why wouldn't you get the most important tool that you're going to use day in, day out? And that's how critical I think this is. And I see these business owners that are continuously having challenges with staying in touch with people and marketing and selling what it is they sell, but then they don't take the time to actually set it up in order to have that. And it's like crazy. So the reason I'm bringing this up is if they're. I have a friend named Jer. He's former make a wish kid and he has this great line. I don't think he came up with it, but he says it to me all the time. Those that get it, no explanation is needed. Those that don't, no explanation will do. So people that get this, they kind of get what it is, I'm saying. But some people, no matter what you say, the reason I'm bringing it up, if there's anyone that is so dense to think that if they don't automate the follow up, that they're really going to mine the gold mine that is their business and should be their business, they're kidding themselves. But those people that are kind of contemplating how do you do this, how do they start? How do they get started with infusion software? What do they look at first to even evaluate if it's a right fit to them or not? Because I know that you guys have transformed thousands of businesses. You've taken so much stress and pain and there's people that you've added millions of dollars to their revenue simply because they have this tool on their and they use it every day. But people that do not. Where do they get started?

Well, here's something that's really interesting. I thought of this as you were talking. One of the things to me that's most interesting about infusionsoft is that our customers almost always come to us after they've been in business one to two years. And the reason is that you don't know what you don't know until you've gone through it and you've stubbed your toe and you Banged your head against the wall and you just start to say, there's gotta be a better way. And what happens is businesses kind of get to a point where they're like, okay, I'm ready to grow up. I'm ready to take this seriously. I'm ready to. I'm ready to turn this from being a hobby into being a real business. And that's when, that's when we can do our best work. For an entrepreneur, for a small business, they kind of have to get, they kind of have to get past those that time where they don't really appreciate what automation can do to help them grow. There's just a stage there where you can kind of quote unquote, poor boy it, you know, for a while. And then you kind of get to a point where it's like, you know what, I got to get serious about this. I got to do it the right way. And so that's what it usually looks like that, you know, usually looks like a couple years of just struggle and frustration where the, and frankly where the business owner is like, eh, I can do this without needing a system to manage it. And then something happens. It's usually things like, you know, you made a mistake with one of your best customers and didn't communicate with them the way you were supposed to, or you sent them the wrong message and they got confused and you were supposed to send them a message about this and you sent them a message about that. So usually what happens is there's a painful mistake or there's a painful realization of opportunity that's just being squandered. And that's when the business owner says, okay, time to get serious about this. Time to grow up and stop wasting the leads that I'm getting. Why am I going to the trade show and bringing home 74 business cards and doing squat with them and having them sit on my desk for two months, then finally brushing them into the trash can. There's things like that that just start to happen and people realize I'm spending money, I'm spending time and effort, but I'm not getting anything out of it. We see that kind of fact pattern happen over and over in businesses before they come to us. And then when they come to us, they're really coming to us. And they're saying, you know what? I need a system, but I need some coaching and some help to do this. I need some guidance. I know you guys know the way to do this, and so show me the way that I do this and help me to get this stuff in place. And that's where our consulting and the coaching that we do to help our customers get started is so valuable. It's the combination of the software and the coaching that helps the entrepreneur get kind of over that, that, that hurdle that they've got to clear to get into a place where they can really.

Automate and grow their business. So is there, is it a substantial cost at this point in order for someone to get involved with Infusion? I mean, what are they going to be looking at in terms of time, money and effort in order to automate their company? I mean, I know it's a, you.

Know, there's a lot less than what you pay.

Joe.

That. I say that, Joe.

I was trying to hold back the smile. I'm trying to do this as a.

Straight face going, of course, yeah, it's a lot less.

Yeah. Most of our customers pay between 200 and $300 per month for our ongoing service. And then there's also an initial implementation, setup, charge. That's what gets people the success coach and all of the lifecycle marketing, planning and getting the things launched. And those are usually $1,500 to about $2,000.

Okay. Yeah.

So it's really, I mean, the cost of getting set up on an ongoing basis is really minuscule compared to the opportunity for.

Yeah. And a lot of times once people are spending money on marketing, you know, there's a difference between spending time on marketing and spending money on marketing. And when people start spending money on marketing, that's when they realize, wait, I could be getting a lot more yield out of the investment that I'm making. And, you know, in some ways, and I hate to be so, you know, trite about what infusionsoft does, but in like, at the most basic level, it just helps you get more out of your marketing investments because you're generating leads, you're generating activity and interest. You've got customers and you're spending time on that. But if you've got a bunch of holes in your process and stuff, you know, you're losing opportunities, then you're not getting what you should get out of the investments you make. And that's what a system will do for you. That's what automated follow up will do for you, is it'll make sure that every lead gets followed up with, every prospect gets, every customer gets followed up with, and you get more yield out of the investments that you make. So that's kind of a, kind of a mechanical way of thinking about it. And yet at the very Base. That's true. It's just getting more out of your investments.

Yeah, totally. I mean, one of the things that I've, you know, I kind of coined this term elf marketing. You know, easy, lucrative and fun. And I would say you can have an elf business or you can have a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And so part of it is setting up an elf business is never just easy. I mean, it may be hard in order to set it up, but once you have it set up, then it actually becomes easy. And I always encourage people that if you can't make a certain aspect of your business elf, why do it? Because even if it's lucrative, it's hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating, it's still half. And so I couldn't imagine doing the things that I do in an elf way without using infusionsoft in order to do it. And there is no super simple way to explain marketing. I mean, I've been in the marketing business for 20 years. I've read over a thousand business books. I mean, the more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know how expansive it is. In the most simplest terms, marketing is what you say and who you say it to, your message, the copy, how you communicate it in who you. Your list. And that's what infusionsoft helps you do it helps you capture the list and automate what you say for as long as you want. I mean, that's the whole essence of it. And if you don't have that system automated, you're gonna have to do it manually. And if you try to hire people to do this, it's gonna cost you a thousand times. I mean, for what? Everything infusionsoft does. And I even think of this in the same way as a sales letter. If I can write a sales letter or a video or an audio that can talk to thousands of people, millions of people. If I had to have those conversations one on one, first off, I could never do it and I wouldn't do that good of a job doing it. But if you can automate that system, think of the leverage there. And people, they're more apt to go out and hire a full time salesperson than they are to say, well, how do I take the time to figure out this? They could replace 100 salespeople. That would cost a couple hundred bucks a month. I mean, it's like a brain dead sort of decision. So if anyone sees this and hears me say this now and then they still question it, then that person, I can't say they're ignorant anymore, because now we just made them aware of it. They're just stupid. But so, you know, we're probably going to do maybe another video along the way and stuff, but where do you see infusionsoft in the marketplace and what it's doing for business owners? Because I know that you guys just have this goal of growing a big company, but really impacting a lot of people. When you walk around, you give your employees here an opportunity. You're constantly educating them. There's books in education everywhere. You're big believers in business owners and teams developing themselves and becoming better versions of themselves. So where do you see infusionsoft five years?

Yeah, well, when we started the business, we had the noble pursuit of building it and selling it and making a lot of money. Originally, that's the way we thought. And after about four or five years, we were like, we don't want to sell this. We love this company. We love the business. We love helping entrepreneurs, and we have a passion to help small businesses succeed. And we have a desire to help small businesses be successful in a smarter, better way. And so in 2007, our whole vision for the company changed, and it went from build it and sell it to we want to be around forever. We want this company to outlast the two of us. We want to see infusionsoft change the world for small business. And so that's what we've been passionately pursuing for the last five, six years now. And what I see in the next five years is a public company that's a big standalone company that stands for small business success, not just software for small businesses, sales and marketing software. But is. Is the company that people recognize these guys are serious about helping small businesses succeed. So that's what I see. And you know what? I would. I'd love to leave something with people, though, whether you ever get Infusionsoft, the software, I want entrepreneurs to be successful. When you think about, and you know this every bit as well as we do, if not better, because you work with so many entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs put their blood, sweat, tears, life into what they do. There's no kind of working. I'm kind of doing this thing. Once you get past the hobby stage, you are all in. And you're all in in a way that most people can't understand. All in. And we know that, we see that and we think, you know, if you're going to be all in, then, dang it, do a few things that are going to help you a little bit. Along the way so that you're not banging your head against the wall. And so what I would say is whether you ever put software in place to automate the process. Get clear on your process of bringing in customers. What is that process? Get clear about it. Get clear on how this actually happens. Because so many times entrepreneurs are just kind of doing their thing, they're running the business, but they haven't taken the time to get clear on how leads come in the door and then how those leads get turned into customers. By what process does that happen? And then once they're customers, how does that actually turn into revenue and dollars in the business and profit? How does that all happen? If you'll get clear on it, then what happens is you start to see some magical things called follow up opportunities where you can actually dramatically improve the way that you bring in leads, the way that you turn those leads into customers, and the way that you maximize the value of those customers. It's as simple as coming down to lead generation, lead conversion, and customer follow up. And if you get clear on that process, all technology aside, if you just get clear on that process, you'll recognize, holy crap, there's so much more I could be doing if I would follow up systematically. Not with software. Just follow up. Have a process for sending out letters and carrier pigeons, whatever the crap you have to do to follow up and get your message in front of people at those key points. To turn leads into customers and customers into lifelong clients. And so I just, when I get a chance to get an entrepreneur that's going through the grind and just kind of trying to make it all work, I just like to grab them by the lapels and say, just stop and think for a second about what your process is. And when you do that, you will give yourself benefits in your business that are just. You're missing right now because you're just in the grind doing your thing. So I would hope that when I leave this earth, on my tombstone it'll say, follow up, Follow up. It actually works.

Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. And we're going to do a tour of infusionsoft so you can actually see a lot of what's going on here because it's a really, it's a fun company, it's a cool company, it's an innovative company, and they really do exist to reduce suffering for entrepreneurs. I think one of the commonalities between all of us is that we're all converts of our own system. We created stuff to help pull us out of some of the traps that we were in, and we're helping other people get out of traps. And that's the reason I wanted to sit down and talk with you guys and show people this, because I know infusionsoft is a solution that will not only take great companies and make them better, it will take great entrepreneurs and make them better, but it will take people that are actually struggling with the most important area of business, which is nurturing, following up and communicating with your clients, the value that you deliver to them, and it can transform your company. And I would be doing a disservice to any people that are in the marketing business to just teach them marketing strategies, but not a way to automate and systemize that. And that's what you guys. You're the best in the world. And so I love industry Transformers, and you've totally transformed an entire industry, and you are now the leading company and organization in the world in your category with helping people, creating what I would call an elf business. So we'll do a tour, and then we'll wrap up.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

And we got a lot of free resources, too. If your viewers want to go to infusionsoft.com they can download a lot of stuff that we've been talking about. They can find free resources there.

Okay, Scott, so we're here at the front entrance of infusionsoftware. We've got this wall with pictures, I would imagine, of clients.

That's right.

That say we empower entrepreneurs. And is there a picture of me anywhere in this wall?

We try to avoid having a picture up on the wall.

I mean, I was thinking a frame picture somewhere of me separate from all of these other people would probably be in order.

Yeah.

Okay, so what's this about? What is this?

Well, I love. I think I actually wasn't a part of designing this at all, but when I first saw this, I was totally. This is one of my favorite walls in the whole company, just because it represents all the small businesses that we're out trying to touch. And, you know, our number one core value is we enable entrepreneurs, and that's what it's all about.

Okay, Scott, so we're overlooking the football field. Whose idea was this?

Actually, it was an accident.

Really?

Yeah.

At the last office that we were in, the landlord, the previous tenant left landlord came in, and it was a sports training company. So they had Astroturf in and a basketball court and everything.

Really? Okay. Yeah.

And he said, hey, yeah, of course. We'll take this out to Clay. Clay's like, whoa, easy, let's just leave that in. So we've had the field there and it kind of just became a part of our whole culture. So you'll see people out there all the time throwing football or Frisbees. And it's a nice space for our company meetings, stuff like that. It's just kind of a fun part of the culture. So here we are. This is the dream room at A Fusion. One of our core values is that we believe in people and their dreams. And this is just a space we created. It's a quiet space. We got a bunch of books in there, and it's just a place for people to come and really think about the future, where they want to be. We've got some cool places for people to sit in there. And one of the things we did about a year ago is we hired a dream manager. So we actually have an employee at the company whose specific responsibility is to meet with employees and just understand what are the dreams that are kind of being suffocated and help them to. To get those out, articulate them, and then make progress toward them. And that could be personal stuff. It could be business related. And our employees really found out to be really helpful. So over here we've got our entire development team and our product, the designers of the product, our product marketing group, and they're the ones that basically make all the magic happen. So they do all the. All of the interviews with the small business owners to figure out what they need. They build something and then they test it and do testing to make sure it's actually easy to use. They get developed, they test it, and they're the ones that make all the magic happen.

Smart people.

So, Scott, behind us is this blue and white wall. This is your core values. And so go through them. Do you have them memorized? Do you actually know what they say?

I think I might get the order out, but yeah. Okay, we'll see. So we talked about, we enable entrepreneurs. That's obviously fundamental to what we do. We listen, we care, we serve. That's a big part of our culture. People have to be able to be willing to serve the small business owner. But have utility screwed. You know, we do what we say we'll do. That's pretty easy to, you know, there's nothing more frustrating for a small business owner to have somebody in customer service tell them, hey, we'll get back to you on this. And then they don't hear from them. So it's obviously a really critical part of what we Do.

Okay, so behind us, this is really cool. It says infusionsoft, the Everest mission. And so what this like five year plan?

That's right. We're a couple years into it, but this is the current mission that we're on. And we spend a lot of energy and time getting the whole company aligned to where we're going and what we're out to accomplish. And this is kind of the visual. Every, every employee has a laminated version of this that they carry around with them. And on the back it has all of the key stats and goals that we're shooting for for the year. But our Everest mission, that's the analogy that we use here, is about getting to 100,000 customers worldwide wide. And, you know, we're making our way up into Camp 2 and heading to Camp 3 and up to the summit. And this is part of a little more sophisticated strategic planning methodology and process that we go through. We have a very rhythmic quarterly strategic planning set of exercises that we go through and things we do to create alignment and focus and clarity about where we're going. Without that, we get chaos. We're all. Everybody's going in different directions. So it's kind of a way to keep everything going in the same direction toward the higher vision.

Well, that was an awesome freaking toy. You guys have a lot of cool stuff there. And as you saw on the video, a lot of neat things taking place in FusionSoft.

Not exactly the most boring corporate office, is it?

No, no. And I do not like corporate offices. So me, the thing is, cool about, you know, maybe we place football and stuff now. So basically, now that people have seen it, they've heard us have a conversation about follow up and automation. How do they get started?

Where do they go?

What are some of the resources you have?

So it's really simple. If you go to infusionsoft.com there's lots of different things you can do there. We've got a lot of educational content that you can consume for free, lots of information about lifecycle marketing, and we've also got a demonstration of the software. You can go watch and see what the software will actually do. And a lot of the education that we do for our customers, we'll also do on the front end. If you just have questions, you want to call us up, we're happy to guide you through some of the lifecycle marketing principles or answer your questions. Whatever we can do to help.

Yep. So I will finish by saying something that Clay mentioned earlier, which is grow up. And I'm not saying that to you. I'm saying that to anyone that actually thinks they're going to have some super successful business and they're not going to have a way to automate the follow up process and so if you are already grown up this is going to make you a better version of yourself and if you just aren't where you need to be then it's time to get to a maturity level and say yes I am going to get this, I'm going to utilize it and I'm going to step up to a whole new version of my myself and my business.

This is an epic day that Joe Polish is telling other people to grow up.

Yeah yeah it's like the pot probably become a black rope but seriously so it was great guys. It's always fun talking about it so thank you. Go to infusionsoft.com and yeah there you go. Today is the last day of the way your business used to be.

Take care.