Here are several things that stood out to me during the day at the Revolution Tour:

• One of our customers builds her follow-up campaigns in Infusionsoft during the hours of 9-11pm … because that’s when her kids are asleep and she’s got some time on her hands. She’s been with us for one year. During that time, she has put 97 follow-up campaigns into place. Wow! In her own words, “I got addicted to the automation and now I’m building follow-up campaigns left and right. I love Infusionsoft!”
• Another customer joined us nearly a year ago because his combination of Salesforce.com and ExactTarget was costing him four times what he’s paying with Infusionsoft. And the best part, as he put it, is “I didn’t even know all of the automation I can do with Infusionsoft that I couldn’t do with my old system.”
• Customers love our new Infusionsoft Success Path that helps them send their first Email Marketing 2.0 broadcast, followed by the Key 3 Follow-up Campaigns: The New Lead Campaign; The New Customer Campaign and The Long-Term Nurture Campaign.
• Our drag-and-drop Email Builder is a crowd favorite.  Oh, and by the way, I got the sneak peak earlier this week at some enhancements our product team is making. It’s getting even better!
• Our Certified Marketing Automation Coaches (CMACs) are doing a bang-up job in Southern California.  In particular, Craig Jacobson and Wes Schaeffer are providing a great service in the form of “User Groups” to our Infusionsoft customers.  It was fantastic to hear all the great customer stories while in San Diego… and several of those customer successes had something to do with the good work of our CMACs and their User Groups.
• The biggest ovation I received during the day was when I announced to the crowd (at about 3pm) that I was leaving to catch a flight to see my two oldest daughters in their piano recital. That was fun to get the support of the crowd.  The look on my daughters’ faces when I showed up with roses at their recital was, well, priceless. Truly one of the best nights of my life as a dad.

These Revolution Tour stops are a blast for us to connect with customers. And for our customers it’s a chance to rev up their use of Infusionsoft and learn valuable business-building tips from our small business growth experts.. If you haven’t been to one, check the link here and be sure to attend a future Tour stop. On September 17, we’ll pull into Austin, TX for the Revolution Tour, so be sure to RSVP now – it’s going to be a great event. I look forward to seeing you there.

It’s for every parent who’s missed a little league game because of his business, every aspiring entrepreneur stuck in a corporate situation that’s sucking the life out of her, every laid off talent who’s feeling lost, and every small business owner who is buried by their business. This is for you and we hope it helps you break free of the chaos—for good.

I’ve spent many days and nights talking with entrepreneurs who get sucked into the chaos of running a business, saving face with their family, and have become discouraged by limited small business funding. This book chronicles the days before Infusionsoft before Scott and I were compelled to grow this business – I know that many of you probably have had similar experiences as we’ve endured.

The goal of the book is to help small business owners who are growing and not quite feeling the sense of satisfaction or freedom in their lives from it. In the book, we cover many topics including work/life balance, building a business that grows, learning and applying disciplined optimism and how to liberate yourself from the pains of small business through automation.

Before picking up Conquer the Chaos, I encourage you to take a moment and read Chapter Zero. In this chapter, Scott and I share additional thoughts that didn’t make it into Chapter one.

We’ve got some special offers that will make it attractive for you to purchase the book for yourself, family, friends and business partners. I’m super excited that it’s published and can’t wait to ignite more entrepreneurs to Conquer the Chaos.

As we build a groundswell of support for the book launch, you can keep up with Scott and I on the @ConquerChaos Twitter account or recommend the book on Facebook. Your support will help take us into the next chapter of helping entrepreneurs.

Tell us what you think. Shoot us a note via email or post a comment to our Conquer the Chaos Facebook page. We want to hear from you.

But I think for many companies it’s an advantage to be outside the typical start-up hotspots. Being an Arizona company is actually a competitive advantage. Here are five reasons why it’s been great for Infusionsoft to be exactly where we are.

5. We’ve been able to fly below the competitive radar. It’s easy for competitors to overlook a company based in Gilbert, Arizona. At trade shows and conferences, I’ve had competitors look at me incredulously when they find out we have nearly 20,000 paying subscribers, as if to say, “why haven’t I ever heard about you?” Actually, some say exactly that. Over time, this advantage has worn off, but for many years, we were able to grow the company in stealth mode because we were “out of sight, out of mind.”

4. It’s easy to compete for talent. When you aren’t one of a million companies competing for tech talent, it’s a lot easier to get what you want. For sharp, young, talented people who want to work for a Silicon-Valley type company without moving to Silicon Valley, we’re one of the few games in town.

3. Local buzz builds easily and naturally. When your company stands out because it’s not like the other companies in the Phoenix area, press coverage comes naturally, which makes it even easier to attract local talent. The local buzz also gives us an opportunity to leverage that into national coverage, bringing additional visibility from the media.

2. It’s easy to attract the gaze of investors. Although there isn’t a lot of venture capital activity in Arizona, there are many firms who want to invest here. Our Series B investor, vSpring Capital (which is based in Utah) like many other firms, has an interest in regional investments, including Arizona. So when we began talking to them, we weren’t competing for their attention among hundreds of other Arizona firms. We landed the investment, they increased their regional presence and we’ve worked well together the past 18 months.

1. It’s cheaper to run the business here. Cost of living is relatively low in the Phoenix area, which means our labor costs are attractive. For a software company, labor is far and away the largest expense, so building a company where labor is relatively inexpensive is a smart thing to do. Rent is also very cheap in Phoenix compared to Silicon Valley and other technology hotbeds. These lower costs enable us to be capital efficient, which is always appreciated by our investors.

Being a big fish in a small pond isn’t the strategy many companies want to employ. For Infusionsoft, it has been a great move. We’re not nearly as big as we expect to be, and I suppose no matter how big we get, if we were still considered a small fish in a big pond, we wouldn’t be big enough for my liking. But as we grow the company, we’ve found our location to be a great competitive advantage. If you haven’t been out to visit, I invite you to come check out our digs, see for yourself and get infused.

At Infusionsoft, we are small business growth experts. We know how to help small businesses grow smart and fast. And we’ve boiled it down to a specific methodology and a proven path that our customers can now follow to dramatically increase their revenue—we call it the ‘Double Your Sales Success Path’. This methodology has been proven time and time again with our successful users and it’s time everyone has the same level of success across the board.

Here’s our proclamation to the world:

We are committed to helping 250,000 small businesses double their sales.

We’ve crystallized the methodology and committed the internal resources to fulfill on this big promise. Every new Infusionsoft customer starts on the path and moves along at their own pace.

Today, we assign our new customers a dedicated Success Coach to help them along the path and we give them the tools they need to progress along the path. I know some of you have hit a few speed bumps getting to know your Success Coaches. It’s alright now; we’ve made changes to make it easy and fruitful for you to get in touch with your coach.

To the cynics who may question the “Double Your Sales” promise we say, go ahead become a believer yourself. We dare you. Because we have thousands of customers who have done it and are smiling with their new-found happiness, liberation and profits. So, let the skeptics squawk. We will continue to prove them wrong, one customer, one business, one entrepreneur at a time.

Let’s clarify the timing of this promise. Who are we to say you will double your sales in a year? We realize that it can take users anywhere from a few weeks to several years to double their sales. That’s okay with us. Each customer’s circumstances (annual revenues, commitment level, available growth capital, etc) will have a lot to do with how fast they double their sales. However long it takes, we’re here to make it a reality.

For me, the fun thing is that when our customers follow the path, they will indeed double their sales.

Forgive me for repeating myself here: When our customers fix their follow up, they will double their sales. Period.

–Clate

[Image credit: chetWill]

We’re excited to announce that we’ve been invited to speak at DEMO 2010 Conference. On Monday afternoon, Infusionsoft co-founder Scott Martineau and I will be presenting on stage showing off our latest edition of Infusionsoft’s email marketing 2.0 software for small businesses. We’ve put a lot of effort into polishing our product. And we are bullish on how it will be received by the DEMO crowd because what we’re doing goes way beyond just a cool technology, it’s about revolutionizing the way small businesses grow. And we’re ready to let millions know who we are and what we’ve set out to do.

If you’re not familiar with DEMO, it’s the place where companies launch their technology products to the world. It’s where TiVo, Palm, Symantec, Java and others have shared their stories and revealed new products. Infusionsoft is among over 60 companies demonstrating their products’ prowess and capabilities. We believe our product is like no other. And it addresses a need that is of the highest order: the key to small business growth. More on this when we make our official announcement Monday.

We can’t be more pleased with getting the opportunity to connect with DEMO’s audience of influencers representing entrepreneurs, investors and mainstream business and tech press including Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Techcrunch, USA Today, Forbes and Network World to name a few. Small business owners need a solid, easy and scalable killer app for their big dreams and entrepreneurial ventures—and we’re here to give it to them.

We’re happy to answer any questions from the media and maybe even give you a chance to try out Infusionsoft with a free trial. Our thousands of small business success stories doubling and tripling sales all point to the fact Infusionsoft helps small businesses grow. Plus, we’ve attracted the best people on earth to work for us which has created a unique company culture we’re pretty proud of. Go ahead and meet some of our Infusionites here. I’ll be reporting directly from DEMO these next few days. You can follow me as well as others on our team going to DEMO: @scottmartineau, @tylergarns, @kathysacks and @monicarmiller.