Casey Graham knows how to hustle.

He started our the hard way – nose to nose selling. Going around in his red pickup to any business or church that would buy his training material. After some time grinding it out Casey asked himself “There is got to be a better way” and found Infusionsoft. We dive deep into Casey’s story and uncover what it takes to grow a small business.

A few things that I learned from Casey’s story.

• 
  
• Change in your business starts with YOU. Infusionsoft won’t fix your business.
  
• When you start out don’t be afraid to go one-on-one with your selling
  
• Don’t dabble, Dominate. Don’t get distracted by the new shiny marketing “thing” dominate a marketing channel.
  

“My objectives are to help launch online companies that make a difference in people’s lives. I truly love direct marketing that affects the lives of others. My goal is to start 11 companies in the next 36 months with other great leaders. This isn’t just talk… I’ve done it for the last 4 years. Started 3 organizations that have all be profitable & serve people well!” from Casey’s Linkedin Profile

Show Links:

• 
  
• The Rocket Company
  
• Casey Graham’s Linkedin
  

Joshua: With that said, I mean, take me back to the red pickup, man. That seems like the origin point of Casey Graham. Am I right or wrong there?

Casey: Yeah, you’re totally right. The red pickup was simply me saying, in March, “I decided I’m going to start a business.” I fired myself from my job that same day and told them that I would work until the end of June and then, on July 1st 2008, I would be a business owner and I was going to start my own thing.

I had no idea what to do. I was working out my leave. At the same time, I just said, “Hey, I’ve got to produce income. There’s zero income here.” I literally just got in my truck and I just started driving around. I had an idea of a product called reaping money while it’s helping people with their personal finances.

Anyway, I just drove around, whether it’s a church or a business or anywhere there was a building that had people in it that I could sell something to, and I literally would just drive up to the building. I’d drive up to the church. I’d drive around and do a cold call kind of nose to nose selling.

I had a 1998 Ford, a red Ranger pickup truck. It was me and some curriculum strapped in the passenger seat with the seat belt. I’d kiss the wife goodbye and the one-year-old baby at home, because I was scared to death, I had to make some money for us. I’d set a budget for the first year of creating $78,000 in sales in year one. I just started going. I started driving. I started knocking on doors. That led me not only driving in my city, but driving around the southeast and spending a lot of time in the pickup truck.

Joshua: Did that work? I mean, did you get to that goal? How did that progression work out for you?

Casey: Yeah, it worked. It didn’t work easily, but it worked out of desperation. I think the first year, I can’t remember exactly, but I think we did like a $123,000 in sales.

Joshua: That’s great.

Casey: It literally was nose to nose. It was phone call to phone call, one to one. I just had scrap pieces of paper in my truck that had people’s phone numbers and email addresses. We didn’t even have a database. We didn’t have marketing software. It was good old-fashion “I’m scared to death, and I just wanted to survive, and so I’m to go sell something today.”

Joshua: I love that. I think a lot of people who are listening can resonate with that. That’s how kind of my story started, too. It’s funny, you start moving your body and you start to learn things, but, at some point, I’m sure you’re asking yourselves there’s got to be a better way. Right?

Casey: Yeah, the whole time. The whole time I’m liking it. There’s a side of it that’s like kind invigorating. I love uncertainties. Not knowing what’s going to happen or not knowing if you’re going to the sale and then you get it or then you lose one, all that kind of stuff kind of adds to it, but I think when it hit me there are better ways. I’ve been doing that for about three years. It was wearing me out because I sold all week and I actually delivered my product and my service, there was delivery on the weekend in the night, so I just worked all the time. I got emotionally burned out, relation-ally burned out. Our business wasn’t necessarily doing terrible. It just was like I was doing terrible.

Joshua: Got it.

Casey: I made a few bad decisions. We went from $70,000 in our bank account from just savings to minus-$30,000, borrowing from a lot of credit and out of credit, literally, in one month out of a decision that I made to start a different business, to make an investment. That was a very bad decision. When that happened, I was like, okay, I’m either going to go get a job at Home Depot or something just to pay the bills or I’m going to give this thing one last shot. I was like there’s got to be a better way.

That’s when I was up late one night. I was on YouTube watching Tony Robbins’ videos. I clicked on something and then I saw Infusionsoft, the masking domain or whatever, on the top of the screen that said, “Infusionsoft,” and then it went to something else, and so I just went to Infusionsoft.com, and it started speaking right to where I was, saying, “Hey, how would like it if didn’t have to travel everywhere and if there was automated follow-up,” and all that.

Joshua: Yeah.

Casey: That was kind of like the “aha” moment for me.

Joshua: Wow. You found that late in the night. Did you buy in? I mean, did you sign up for that and make that investment?

Casey: I think it was a demo I did. I did a demo at that time. I remember immediately getting an email from Evans Samurin, and Evan, from Infusionsoft, saying, “Hey, I’m glad you filled this out. I can’t wait to catch up with you.” It’s like this personal email sent at 2:00 or 1:00, I can’t remember how late it was, maybe 12:00 in the morning.

I watched the demo. I emailed him. I was, like, “This is incredible. I’ve never heard of automated marketing. I’ve never heard of automated follow-ups.” I really thought there was somebody there, that there was a sales guy that was connected with me.

Joshua: Yeah, you’re right. These guys never sleep.

Casey: Yeah. It worked on me. Then, they got me on the phone. Very, very soon after, I got on the phone. I didn’t buy it first because we didn’t have a lot of money. We were kind of strapped on the finances. I didn’t know if it was all bull crap because you don’t believe how all this automation is going to work for you. It’s like having 25 sales people working for you while you sleep and all this kind of stuff. I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

I don’t know if it’s really true, so I spent a good amount of time in the sales process, maybe about three to four weeks, before I made a decision.

Joshua: Got it. Got it. Where does the Philippine story snapped into all this? I’m really curious about that because I think that’s another interesting point that I’ve heard you talk about. Like did you go over there in the midst of all this kind of craziness to help outsource things?

Casey: Yeah, absolutely. Right now, I’m talking within a time span of about two to three months of all of the crap hitting the fan.

Joshua: Got it. Okay.

Casey: We’re about three years into the business. I go $30,000 in the [hole 00:06:17] and then, actually, I went about 80,000 total because I had some investor money that I borrowed at that time, too. I went from 70,000-positive to 80,000-negative pretty quickly. Our cash flow was drying up. I literally went out of cash and just couldn’t pay people, or I was about to not be able to pay people that worked with me.

I literally just fired three people in one day, at one time. I just sat with them and said, “Hey, you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just that, in a couple of weeks, I’m not going to be able to pay you, and so you need to find something else to do. I’m just giving you heads up. This has nothing to do with your performance.” It was awful.

Joshua: Oh, man.

Casey: I was literally got on a plane within a week and went over to the Philippines to try to find some outsourced business solutions, because we were in a bookkeeping business, to see if there were any bookkeeping outsourced solutions over in the Philippines. I was there for seven days. I found a CEO guy. I called. I stayed in this 30-floor apartment in downtown Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

While I was there, on the last night that I was there, I was up at like 5:00 in the morning because I was going to go to the airport, and just heard these knocks at the door. I kept hearing these knocks, and the guy was actually not there. It was just me in this apartment in the middle of the Philippines.

To make a long story really short, I opened the window curtain up, and there was a guy that’s hanging from the 14th floor. He has repelled down the side of the building with two pieces of yard tied together. He’s got blood all over, and he’s trying to get through the window to get to me.

Joshua: Oh, my Lord.

Casey: I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said. I ran down 13 flights of stairs. I’m standing, literally, in the middle of the street in Manila, Philippines. There’s an armed guard at the bottom of the building. We’re looking up back toward the building. That guy is stuck outside my window, on the window, still hanging. Like, if the yard breaks, he dies.

Joshua: Wow.

Casey: They call the cops. We go up there. They pull him through and he’s screaming and cussing at me all the time. It’s a crazy story of this random act of violence, but the reason I was there, and I literally almost lost my life, was because I was trying to make a change in the business.

Joshua: That’s insane. He didn’t know or anything. You’re in this place and he’s trying to get in, and he thinks that you’re someone else or something.

Casey: Yeah, total craziness.

Joshua: Wow.

Casey: The point of that is not the point.

Joshua: Right.

Casey: The point of it is that like that was rock bottom for me.

Joshua: Right.

Casey: That’s when something’s got to change. Like I was just miserable, that I thought I was going to get into business to find all this freedom, and I’m not going to do that in the middle of the streets in the Philippines almost getting killed.

Joshua: That story resonates with me and a lot of the listeners that I’ve talked to. They’ll me up and say, “Joshua, I’ve got Infusionsoft now. Why isn’t my business working automatically?” They’re kind of at that point where they hit rock bottom. They see tool that can help them, but they’re struggling to connect the dots between these two places and cannot move forward.

What would you say to that person? Where should they start? What should they start thinking about?

Casey: Yeah. What I would say is Infusionsoft is never going to fix your business because it’s a piece of software and it’s a philosophy. It can never fix you. Most business owners are out looking for the [inaudible 00:09:49] of the technology or the external factor that’s going to be the difference-maker in their business. The reality is that there isn’t one.

The factor that makes the difference in a business is between the two ears of the business owner. If the psychology, the mindset of the business owner that wakes up every day that creates a clear picture or the clear vision for what could and should be in the future and aligns themselves and the team members around accomplishing that, then the tools like Infusionsoft, or any other tool, those can add or multiply to that vision. It’s never going to be the people that kind of smoke the pipe dream. They just think that all this automation just works.

You know what I found about automation is that somebody’s got to set up the automation. Somebody’s got to make sure the automation is working. Somebody’s got to put the systems into place. Somebody’s got to monitor the systems. It’s not all rosy, just easy pictures. It does work if you work it.

I see so many people that give up right before they make a breakthrough. Oftentimes, for me, in my life, breakthroughs come right after a breakdown. If you’re at that breakdown point, you’re right at the point where Infusionsoft or any tool or [inaudible 00:11:08] your business that you could breakthrough, but you can’t quit.

Joshua: You got to keep going. That’s so true. I found that a lot of people I’ve talked who call Infusionsoft “Confusionsoft.” Actually, what’s confusing is what’s going on inside of them and what’s going on inside of their business. Infusionsoft is really just showing them that. It’s kind of a mirror of sort.

That’s really powerful, Casey. Thank you for sharing that. I’ve never really heard someone so clearly articulate the importance of forming a vision and then going after that and how the technology and all the tools kind of line up behind that. You don’t put them in front of you. You’ve got to get it figured out on the inside.

That’s a good transition into the topic of focus. I think, to date, you are the most quoted person I’ve ever had on the show, meaning, that everyone I seem to interview quotes your, “don’t dabble, dominate” that I believe you said at the last Infusion con. It’s such a powerful idea. I think we, as marketers, get so attached to all the shiny objects out there and we think that all these shiny objects are going to solve our problems.

How did you come to that conclusion of “don’t dabble, dominate?” You’ve mentioned Twitter as like you dominate Twitter, so I’d love, as a second part of that question, if you can dive into how Twitter has been useful to you.

Casey: Yeah. I didn’t learn the lesson making some cool statement. My statement is simply this. Stop dabbling. Start dominating. The reason why I learned this was that the thing that has put us into tailspins in the business. The things that put us into really just where our growth is stalled or whatever is when we quit focusing on the one thing, dominating. We have many focuses. We have many priorities.

I think it’s funny when people say “what’s your top three priorities” because you can’t have a top three. It’s impossible. There’s really only one top priority. It is the priority. Many people have three because they don’t want to commit to one, because it feels like you’re just excluding everything else.

What I found, for me, in my life, and for business is that, when you eliminate everything else except the one thing and you burn all the ships and you just say, “I will not quit until I accomplish this goal,” then, most of the time, you will spin your wheels and you will not get traction in your company or in your life. It’s like so many people, they set New Year’s resolutions in five different areas, but, hey, what if you just set one? What if you said this is the year?

Many people don’t want to do that because of stuff that they’re leaving off the table. The reality is, if you put everything on the table, you’ll never do anything on the table. You’ve got to just focus down on that one thing. Focus. Rally, you, your team and everybody around that. Once you do that, you’ll find traction and it will be massive.

The last thing I would say about this is that clarity breeds confidence, and confidence breeds certainty. Here’s what I know about certain people. Certain people take massive action. If you are certain about the outcome, if it’s clear in your head and in between your ears, you will take massive actions to make it happen.

Dabbling was kind of the dagger to our small business. It’s what left us bleeding per se, losing money and having too much going on. We just said, “We’re only going to do this one this. We’re going to do it. We’re not doing anything else until it’s done,” and that’s what skyrocketed us into some of the small success that we’ve had.

Joshua: Got it. Yeah. I think we oftentimes don’t want to commit because we’re afraid, “Oh, what if it fails.” I think by focusing, and even if we do fail, there’s so much learning in that that’ll help us springboard into the next thing. I couldn’t agree more. I think focus is just absolutely crucial.

Tell me about Twitter, because a lot of people don’t even think that, and a lot of people don’t even want to talk about social media, and I want to be careful here because I don’t want this to sound like I am making everybody say, “Go look at Twitter and check out Twitter,” but I’m just curious. You have a unique ability to connect, I think, really well on stage.

Are you using Twitter in that same way to connect directly with people and share your story?

Casey: I used to. Okay? Twitter, where this is coming from is that ICON where I was speaking. When we were stuck and we had just bought Infusionsoft and all that stuff, and everybody was like giving me all these suggestions, “You should use Facebook. You can use LinkedIn. You should have this advertising and this advertising.” I was so fed up with dabbling. I said, “We’re only going to do the one things that we have to do.” For me, I know to do Twitter, and I knew the pastors were there.

We were serving the church market at that time. That’s the only market we were serving, and so, literally, I just said, “I’m going to go on Twitter and I’m going to find pastors. I’m personally going to take them into a sales funnel by grabbing them, creating conversation with them and, one at a time, selling them into services that are going to help them and help their church.”

I just had a relentless focus that our digital marketing efforts, our only strategy was Twitter. The reason why is because it’s where the market was and we can get to people fast and have conversations with them. I could search people’s profiles to see if they’re a pastor and, literally, have a conversation with them within minutes. That’s where we started. I just said, “That’s what we’re going to do.”

The principle here is not using Twitter. The principle here is to just focus on doing one thing and doing it well. What we did is we literally grow our business one customer at a time at first.

Many people who may get Infusionsoft, they’re like, “Oh, I want to build this big list. I’ll send all these emails and get a bunch of customers all at one time.” That sounds great. It works for very few people. The thing that works the most is going one at a time at first and then growing your base and then, as you’re list grows and everything grows, then you can go big.

Don’t try to go big at first. Just go one by one by one. Think sniper fire more than anything else. One shot, one kill. One idea, one sale, one thing, and one media. That’s what decided to do.

Joshua: That’s beautiful. It reminds me of that marketing pyramid that I think Dan Kennedy put together, which is the market medium and the message. You knew the market was on Twitter and you had a message that they resonated with. Twitter was just the means of connecting with them. It wasn’t the magic bullet or anything like that. You just knew they were there, you could find them and connect.

I love that “work one to one first and then figure out what scales later.” That’s another great tip. Man, you’re dropping knowledge bombs on us, Casey. I appreciate that.

Casey: Thanks for having me.

Joshua: Yeah. Yeah. You’re now doing Business Rocket. Tell me a little bit about that. Can our audience benefit from that? I want to make sure that we have the ability to connect with you and work with you if we see an intersection here.

Casey: Yeah. Business Rocket is basically where we’re taking our business and turning it inside out for small businesses and businesses that want to grow, break through financially.

We’re literally showing the five phases of breakthroughs that business owners have to go to through to get to the next level. These are very quick, but the person, you, as the business owner, have to have breakthroughs mentally and psychologically. You got to reprogram the way you’re thinking about your business. That’s where it starts.

The second thing is people. You got to have the right people around you that are aligned around the right purpose, mission and values.

Processes, that’s what we’ve been talking a little bit today. What is the process of how you gain new customers and scale them through the perfect customer lifecycle I’ve told you in Infusionsoft. We talk about your product. How do you demand more from your market as it relates to your product and become the authority around your product so you can get more money from your product or service, whether your service-based business or your product.

The last piece is profits. How do you manage your cash flow system? How do you manage your cash reserve systems and how do you manage your cash in your pocket systems? Those are the five components that we’re basically saying, “Here’s how we do it at The Rocket Company.” It’s not just strategy. It’s, literally, “Here’s he strategy,” but then, also, “Here’s the spreadsheet I’ll look at every day. Here’s the inside out.” It’s kind of like turning the orange inside out and saying, “You just want to look inside of a business that’s going to do about $3 million.”

If that would be helpful for you to see so you could kind of see how we’re doing it. Some of it’s really cool. Some of you will look at it and go, “That sucked.” That’s fine, too. We are opening it up.

We have Rocketaccessatl.com. We’re doing gatherings of about 20 small business owners every quarter where we get together and we go really, really deep dive for three days. It’s a working whiteboard session. It’s like group consulting with 20 awesome businesses that are wanting to break through financially. That’s how they can connect.

Joshua: That is amazing. What was that URL again? I’m going to put this in the show notes, but I just want to make sure that I hear it. It’s Rocketetl?

Casey: No. Rocketaccesatl.

Joshua: Got it. Okay. I will put that at the show notes at Infusioncast.co/caseygraham.

Casey, in that process of doing this group consulting and talking to so many businesses, what do you find that most businesses are missing when it comes to growth?

Casey: That the owner doesn’t want to grow.

Joshua: It all starts with the captain of the ship.

Casey: Yeah. Everybody says they want their business to grow, but then when what’s required of them to grow is for them to grow is when the tension comes in. The mindsets, like how you actually think about your business and, literally, the blueprint that you have in brain of what a business would like like, and let’s say you have five employees, want a business that would look like with 50 employees. Whatever that blueprint you have in your brain of what 50 would be, it’s either holding you back or compelling forward to something bigger than what you are.

What I see is that most people just like say, “Yeah, I want my business to grow,” but they want to remain exactly the way they are because it’s comfortable and they understand it and they can control it.

Growth in business starts with the growth in the business owner. That’s where we start first. That’s the first thing. I was talking about the person, the entrepreneur. That’s the biggest difference I see between the ones who go to the next level and break through and the ones who stay stagnant.

Joshua: Man, I can hear some of the listeners in my head already going, “Casey, I want to grow. How do I start? Where do I go? I’m willing to do that. I just don’t even know how to think about that.”

What would you say to them?

Casey: I want to ask them, if that’s true, two different questions. How much money do they have set aside that they are paying out to outside coaches and mentors and people that are outside their business that they’re learning from? How much money do they have budgeted toward that for their personal growth? You can say all day long that you want to grow personally, but, if you’re not paying for whether it’s events or audio programs, and the problem with free stuff is that it’s free, and you don’t take them as seriously.

The owner, if you want to start somewhere, find a coach. Find a consultant. Find somebody externally that you’re paying money. It gets the best out of you. Professional athletes have coaches for a reason. They already know how to play the sport. It’s the mental game of staying in the game and giving peak performance. That’s where coaches come in. That’s the first thing I would say is how much are allotting. Put your money where your mouth is.

The second thing I would say is how much time do you spend learning. How much time do you spend learning? If you’re not spending a significant 20%, 30% of your time reading, listening to Podcast or listening to a book online, reading blogs or whatever, you’re going to get stagnant and you’re probably going to get stuck.

I will just say how are you learning paid, how are you learning free, and what your system for that, because that’s where I would start [progressing 00:23:31].

Joshua: Man, that’s powerful, Casey. There’s a lot of people that just get stuck. They’re not growing and their business is not growing. They’re scratching their head. I think you’re totally right. It all starts with us and where our internal state lies.

Casey, you’re kind of coming down to the end of the interview here. One of the things that I really like to ask to close things out is “what are some of the things that you do on a personal level to set yourself up to success?” Maybe it’s what you just told me actually.

Casey: First thing is that we have a board. We’re a privately held company, and I own all the shares, but I still have a board. These are three men that have been very successful in business, but they also know me personally. They kind of know how I’m wired as well. We meet on a biannual basis. We go away for one night and, literally, I get into owner stake with them because, if you’re working in your business, you’re an employee as well as an owner. I get out of employee mode and I get into owner mode and have owner conversations at the next level.

Number one is that you should find two to three people that you gather, biannually, you get together, that are smarter than you, that have bigger businesses than you, and you structure the time to ask them questions. Lay out your plan and let them poke holes in it, those kinds of things. That’s the first thing that I do.

The second thing that I do is I pay for coaches and I pay for learning. If I don’t have a coach, I’m screwed. The first thing my wife will tell me I will get stuck and will get stagnant, and our business will kind of peter out. She’ll just look at me and say, “Are you paying for coaching?” Even when we didn’t have money at all, literally, my wife will say, “Go pay for a coach right now. Go pay.” I pay for business coaches.

I’ll tell you the third thing I do is I go to counseling. I go to a counselor, literally, a psychologist that helps me process the emotional side of business, how I’m wired, things that are going on underneath the surface, why I’m angry, what are some things going on inside of me. I pay for counseling. I just believe in having outside forces and outside of this relationships doing that.

I’ll tell you the last thing is I just have a dang good time with my friends. One of the best things that you can do to grow your business is quit being in your business for about a week. Take some time with your friends, your family. Literally, I go on a vacation every year for three weeks where I give my cell phone to my assistant and I’m just gone. I’m out of touch for three weeks every single year, and regardless of what state the business is in or isn’t in, and I get refreshed. What I’ve noticed is, when I come back, man, I’m ready to just take it down and take massive action.

Joshua: That’s great. You just get that fire, re-fired up and ready to go.

Casey: Hey, but most business owners don’t do this stuff, bro. Like the business owners I meet, they work in their business. They don’t take time to work on themselves.

Joshua: Yeah, I hear you. I’m guilty of that. I took the first vacation of the last three years last September and did exactly what you just said. I went to Thailand for three weeks, shut the phone off, just had a good time vagabonding around in the islands in the south, and I came back a completely different person.

I’ll be honest with you, Casey, the first week of that, I went through like a little mini psychosis, man. I felt like I was doing something wrong, like I wasn’t worthy to take time off. That was such a revealing thing for me about, “Wait a second, am I working on the business or is the business just worked me over?” It helped me put some things back into perspective. It’s a powerful thing to get offline.

Brad Martineau actually said his biggest success thing is he just doesn’t take his phone home. I constantly hear this over and over and over again from really successful people that you got to disconnect. You got to take time off the grid and rejuvenate, and it’ll actually make you much more productive. That energy will come back to you. It’s a beautiful thing.

Casey, if people have any questions for you directly, what is the best way for them to connect with you?

Casey: Email me personally. Okay? Casey@therocketcompany.com.

Joshua: Awesome. I will put all of this and more at Infusioncast.co/caseygraham. Casey, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Casey: Absolutely. Thanks, bro.

The post Casey Graham: What it takes to be successful with Infusionsoft. appeared first on Infusioncast.