In today’s Infusioncast Joshua Millage interviews Bret Martineau, head of Making Things Work Right and General Coolness at Frank Kern, Inc. Yes, that is his real title. You may also remember Bret from our Infusioncast Tactical Tuesdays and Web Development Wednesdays, as well as the Build a Business Project. Now he is back with us again to talk about getting the most out of Infusionsoft, your business, and your life in general.

Infusionsoft is packed with options and capabilities, and Bret cautions not to think you have to master all it has to offer. The best approach is to do only what you need to do to get started. You can add and modify as you go forward – establish your presence and visibility now.

First you need to get people in. You need a mailing list and a form that enters data directly into Infusionsoft. Send out whatever emails, videos, or broadcasts you have to start driving traffic to your site. Once you have momentum you can work on fresh content. Doing a little is better than doing nothing.

Getting into this rapid mindset is not about quantity, but consistency with one project at a time. Present one campaign and gauge how people react to it. Watch where people connect with your offering and where they drop off. Where are you losing them? Use your statistics and feedback to target the people who came and saw, and then left. Follow up with those people with a new offer. See who doesn’t connect with that, and then give them something fresh to interact with.

As a business owner you are a marketer and an innovator, and you know best how you want to present your business. Always ask yourself, “This segment of my audience is not biting. What am I going to do with them?†Optimize what you have working now and build on what you learn before moving on to a new campaign.

Bret also shares some of what he is learning about how life’s lessons tie together with business. A key to how things work out for you is the story you tell yourself about your capabilities and your prospects for success. If you tell yourself you have limitations, then you will have limitations. But you can change that story to one of possibilities by removing your mental boundaries so your true capabilities can come across.

We are often held back by what others tell us we “should†want out of life, instead of discovering what it is that we truly want. Sometimes the hardest thing is simply knowing what you actually do want, but deep down you already know. And you’re the only one who does.

To change your story, to improve your life and succeed in your business, start with knowing where you truly are and how you feel about your situation. Get clear about where you want to be. Then push to do more than you think you can to prove to yourself that improving your productivity and achievements is possible. Set daily rituals that encourage positive thinking. Share what you learn so you can internalize it more solidly for yourself. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your life and in your business.

You can get more information about Infusionsoft, plus useful WordPress plugins and support, at Infusionsoft.com. Thank you for joining us.

You can connect with Bret Martineau on Facebook, or via email at bretmartineau@gmail.com.

Show Links:

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• Frank Kern, Inc.
  
• Build a Business Project
  
• Infusioncast Tactical Tuesdays
  
• Infusioncast Web Development Wednesdays
  
• Infusionsoft
  

Joshua: Hey, everyone. We’re back with another episode of Infusioncast, and today, I have the privilege of interviewing Bret Martineau. Some of you may remember Bret Martineau from the Tactical Tuesdays, Web Development Wednesdays and other fun episodes that we created this last fall, and I decided to have Bret come back and do an official Infusioncast expert interview with me. Since the fall, he has left and joined the Frank Kern team and he’s a — well, I’ll let you hear the title in the intro, it’s pretty funny. In addition to that, I have a short announcement. I’m going to be at InfusionCon next week, and I’d love to meet up with you guys, so if you haven’t already, go and join our Infusioncast Confidential Facebook group. You can just search for it by typing in Infusioncast Confidential, and I will be posting some information this week about an informal meetup, I guess you could call it.

I just want to meet some of you in person and potentially if we have time, maybe even do some short interviews with you, and you can be on Infusioncast. Look out for that announcement in the Infusioncast Confidential Facebook group. I’m looking forward to being at InfusionCon next week and it’s always a great conference. Let’s get into it.

Speaker 2: How the heck do you Infusionsoft? How do you make it work for you? Welcome to Infusioncast, the only podcast that shows you the tricks of the trade and teaches you on how to be an Infusionsoft expert. Join your host, Joshua Millage, as he sits down with Infusionsoft pros to hear their stories and experiences making Infusionsoft work for them. Ready? Here’s Joshua.

Joshua: All right, hello everyone and welcome to the Infusioncast podcast, the only podcast that teaches you how to be an Infusionsoft expert. My guest today is Bret Martineau, and Bret is the head of Making Things Work Right and General Coolness at Frank Kern, Inc., and you probably also remember Bret from our Build a Business project this last fall, where we taught you a bunch of different things on how to make your Infusionsoft app work right. Bret, thank you so much for coming back on Infusioncast.

Bret: Yeah man, I’m excited. This is fun. It’s always in the back of my head thinking how can I get back on the podcast.

Joshua: I know the audience is going to love having you back and you’ve been on quite a journey from when we were doing some episodes until now. You’ve left a previous job and joined Frank, and I’m excited, Man. What are some of the things that you’ve been learning recently? You have an advanced knowledge of Infusionsoft. What has changed recently, if anything?

Bret: You mean with Infusionsoft or just in general?

Joshua: I think both because I know it’s going to be both with you. I know you’re going to say life/Infusionsoft and how they connect so I’m curious.

Bret: I think one thing that hasn’t necessarily changed but has been more solidified, we talked a little bit about when you approach Infusionsoft, not trying to dive too deep right away, just picking some things to start with and then not going into all the places, and as we’ve started to roll out some of our programs, we have 30 to 40 businesses come out every month, and we push some campaigns to them, and we teach them how to use them. More and more are realizing that if you can cut away as much as possible of what’s in Infusionsoft and just focus on things that are going to get you money now, you’re going to be 1,000 times more productive.

Some people have come out, never used Infusionsoft before, and we rolled these campaigns in there, taught them how to use them, connect all the stuff up together. All they had to do was change content, and these people would make like — there’s this one dude that’s already recouped his investment 2 weeks ago, his investment, because we told him not to worry about — I mean we talk about dashboards a lot. The Sixth Division talks about dashboards a lot, which are incredibly important. They talk about naming conventions with tags and all that kind of stuff, which is all very, very important, but when you’re getting started, it’s a distraction to be honest. You just set up their names and roll from there. Once you get to the point where you’ve got some money flowing and you can invest in cleaning it up and getting organized as Sixth Division says, but there’s a step before organize, which is get something launched.

Joshua: That’s so true. What are some of the ways that people get launched? Have you seen certain styles of campaigns work well, or does it really just have to be tailored per business type?

Bret: No, I think there are some types that work well, but honestly, the strategy of how you’re going to get stuff launched and what types of campaigns you’re going to use is almost secondary. The first thing is that you have to start sending stuff. You got to get people in. You got to get a form live. You got to start driving traffic. You got to just get something going. Honestly, if you have a list, that means sending them a broadcast today. If you don’t have a list, then it means putting up a form that just goes to, dumps into Infusionsoft. You’ve got maybe a 2 or 3 email series. Maybe if you’ve got some videos, you can throw those in there, but it’s like — set yourself a goal that says I’m going to launch and have people running through this, watching the videos, getting the emails by the end of the day tomorrow.

Then whatever it takes, it doesn’t matter if the emails aren’t perfect, it doesn’t matter if the videos aren’t all the way uploaded, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, launch it. Then go from there. Launched 50% is 1,000 times better than unlaunched 100%.

Joshua: I see. A lot of people just get that infinite loop, mental cul de sac of this needs to do this, do this, do this, do this, do this.

Bret: All it needs to do is be there, and you need to capture people’s information and then send them something. You just got to get it up, get it live. Don’t worry about perfection. Don’t worry about getting it right, because all that stuff you have to tweak and test anyway, and the big thing is you don’t know that your first draft isn’t going to be perfect.

Joshua: That’s interesting.

Bret: Even what you consider to be broken might be perfect.

Joshua: Wow, that’s such a good point. You never know what’s going to happen til you do it. Yeah, I love the execution mindset and continuing just to push forward in things. That’s awesome, Bret. With that, do you find that there’s a mindset that comes out of that where when you iterate, you’re also just launching things but you’re just gauging it on a little bit of feedback? What’s the pace to build things? Do you find that certain businesses should be launching stuff every day, or is it like a launch, test, observe results? How do we get into that rapid mindset?

Bret: That’s a great question. I think if Frank’s taught me anything, which he has, if Frank ever hears this, I’m not going to ever admit to having said that, but the biggest thing I think with Frank is that it’s not about the quantity of campaigns launched but about the amount of times that you go back and tweak and add things and deal with contingencies. Frank is, and this is something that I understood coming out of Sixth Division and PlusThis but not nearly to the extent that I get now. The contingencies are where the money is, meaning say you’re going to launch an automated webinar using stealth seminar. You’re going to launch this out. You’re going to have people either — you’re going to send it to your list to get people to register. You’re also going to want to drive some Facebook traffic. A certain number of people on your list are never going to register for the webinar. What are you going to do with those people? That’s contingency number 1. A lot of people are going to register and they will never even show up. What are you going to do with them? A lot of people are going to show up but they’re not going to stay until the actual offer. What are you going to do with them? A lot of people are going to show up, stay until the offer but they’re not buying. What are you going to do with them? Some people are going to show up, stay until the offer, watch all of your post-objection handling videos and still not buy. What are you going to do with them?

It’s about going through setting it up with that mindset, but then as people start to go through noticing where all the people are dropping off and then building something for them. We just launched a campaign actually to sell this boot camp thing that we’re doing, and we launched it, and we had a framework of what we’re doing and then as we went, we realized that a lot of people are dropping off at a certain point. Frank just made a video that said, “Hey, this is what we’re doing.” Show them the campaign that we’re doing and launch it to all those people and then send another email.

Those people watched that video, some of them ended up purchasing, and then the people that did watch the video but didn’t purchase, we sent another one. It’s just keeping track. It’s almost like instead of going broad, instead of going wide with the number of campaigns and the number of things you’re doing, go deep on one. Does that make sense?

Joshua: Totally makes sense, yeah, and I think that people do that all the time in their businesses. This is something that we’ve learned recently at codeBOX is that the expense it takes to take on a new client or a new customer or just find one, the prospecting, the sales process and going through that is so much more time expensive and money expensive than it is to go deep with your current customer base and offer new opportunities. I guess when that applies to Infusionsoft, it’s like for us it’s not about how many new campaigns are launching. It’s optimizing current campaigns, which is essentially what you’re saying, looking at all the contingencies and speaking to people based on their actions and behavior.

Bret: Yeah, I think there’s a general mindset in Infusionsoft and just in any automation community where it’s like the whole point of this is set and forget. Everyone who’s a business owner thinks that their job is to build their marketing and then it will do something, but I think that it’s probably more true in most cases that if you are a business owner, you are the marketer or the marketer for your business, which means your job is not so much to just build the marketing once and then deploy it and then go like if you’re a gym owner and then go train people, which is what you think you really want to do. Your job is to be watching the campaign, and as it rolls out, see what’s happening and interact with it in real time. As things are happening, you don’t get away from the marketing. You get deeper into the marketing.

Joshua: That’s really good. That’s really good and I think you’re right. I think I heard, I believe it was Peter Drucker say, “The only two things you don’t outsource in business is innovation, so creating new things like new products, new services, executing on new ideas, and marketing.” Everything else is able to be outsourced, whether that’s manufacturing, even management to some degree, sales, if you have the sales force, but when it comes to your marketing message and marketing at the high level, you can’t outsource that. That needs to be connected to the business owner because the business owner at the same time is connected to innovation. They are the ones that can bridge the gap between the product and service and the message that’s going out the door. I’ve always really enjoyed that.

All right, well I have to go here, Bret, because we had so much fun on Mindset Mondays and you gave me a little tidbit of some cool things you’ve been doing in your personal life, and not that you have to go into those, but what have you been doing and learning in strengthening your mind?

Bret: Oh man.

Joshua: That’s a big one but I know you can comment.

Bret: It’s a combination of the fact that we haven’t done this for awhile and the fact that I just had this incredible experience specifically about this so I’ve got backed up stuff plus all this stuff in here. I think I’ll just limit it to one because I think it all gets wrapped up into this one thought, and that is in general, in everything that you’re doing, remember that you can just tell yourself a different story.

A lot of times, we get stuck in the stories that we have about how our life is,
number 1, and what we want, and sometimes we’ll bury our real desires either because we’re afraid of what people will think or whatever it is, but I think the most important thing is tell yourself the true story about number 1, where you are, what you actually want, where you are, how you feel about things, what you’re going for, and then what you really want, because in everything, whether it’s fitness, whether it’s in relationships, whether it’s in spirituality or in business or anything you’re doing, if you know, if you can be honest with yourself, if you can be real with yourself about where you are and what you’re actually after and you can be real with yourself about what you want and what the end goal is. The thing is it doesn’t matter what anybody else says, because this is about what you actually want deep down with the stuff that most people, men specifically, but most people tend to just hide because there’s this story that you’ve allowed the world to tell you about what you should be doing, but if you can just get down to what you actually want and cut out all the extra stuff, cut out all the stories and all the, “My mom says this, or my business partner says this, this guy says this. This coach says this. This other coach says a different thing,” all that stuff. Where are you, and what do you want?

That will shortcut you to getting the satisfaction that you want because a lot of times, especially in business, we’ll hear what somebody else says and we’ll say I must have that because this person wanted it, but if it’s not what you actually want, then it’s not going to help you at all because you’re just dancing around what you really want. You’re always going to be frustrated with life and with everything that’s happening, because you’re dancing around what you truly want because you think that what everyone else is telling you about what you should want is true, when really, you know what you want. Go after that.

As it turns out, the biggest thing is if turns out and you get that and it turned out it wasn’t what you wanted, that’s fine. That’s not the point. The point is that you have to be right about what you want. The point is that you got to be honest. You got to be real with yourself and go for those kinds of things.

Joshua: In that, that’s really good. What’s — how do you find what you want? I’ve had that conversation with so many people recently, friends who are going through career changes and relationship changes and so forth, and I’ve asked that question, “What do you want?” They’re like, I don’t know where to start thinking about what I want because I’m in such a reactive state to all these different events and things that are going in my life so I don’t have time to think about what I want.

Bret: That’s a great question. This was my experience. I can’t necessarily speak for everyone but I would submit to you that what I’m about to say is more true than you will initially think. The fact of the matter is if you think that you don’t know what you want, the truth is that you’re allowing a story to influence you to not accepting what you know you already want. You already know what you want. The short answer is you know what you want, even if you’re not giving yourself time or space to go there and actually write it down.

Honestly, when you talk about not having time, the answer, what I would
normally say, and this was the case for me, is that you’re scared to take the time because you don’t have time. It’s that when you’re in bed and you can’t sleep, instead of just going there and figuring out what you want and just letting your mind go to those things that you want, you’re worried about other things which don’t help you get to where you want anyway.

I think the biggest thing in that situation, and again I can only speak for my own personal experience, but the fact is, deep down you know what you want. You really do, because I had that same, when I was at Sixth Division, I had financial conversations about how much do you want to make, and I couldn’t, I wouldn’t allow myself to answer the question because of a lot of different stories that I had allowed myself to believe about — there was some religious stories that came in, some face stories about well I’m not allowed to want a bunch of money, because that’s selfish of me and those are the things that came together.

The fact was I wanted to make a lot more money than I was making, and I had a number in mind, but I never actually said it because I was too afraid to go there because of the story that I had allowed myself to believe that everyone else told me. I think just giving yourself space to go there, meditation is something that gets a good rep from some people and bad rep from other people. It just helps you create that space and just block everything else out and just let yourself go there, just let go of the stories, let go of everything else and just go to those places that are there, because your heart, your mind, buried somewhere deep down in there, it knows.

Nobody else is going to tell you what you want because you’re the only one that knows.

Joshua: That’s huge, man. That’s huge. Bret, I mean that’s I think one of the things that I hope people take away as they start to go throughout their day to day is what’re the stories that they’re telling themselves. Do you have any suggestions on how to change a story actually?

Bret: Well it starts with the way you change your story, number 1 is being real with yourself. The story, a lot of times that we tell ourselves is a way for us to quietly lie to ourselves and get away with it, again about what we want. If you can make some space to get real with yourself about where you actually are in life and how you feel about things and then really discovering what it is that you want, then the story shifts because now it’s not about, “Well this is what this other guy thinks.” It’s about, “I know where I am.” The biggest thing, actually I don’t know if you saw this, but I put a video up on Facebook a couple of days ago, yesterday, which has been a cool experience for me to start shipping these messages out because it helps me really dig deep and really believe what I’m saying, but one of the big things was I run into this all the time in my life, people saying, “Well if you really X, then you would X.”

I get this from, “If you really love me, then you would do this or if you really
wanted to be successful, you would do this other thing.” Sometimes that’s true, sometimes there is some truth to what’s happening, but the point is just because somebody else, it’s somebody else’s story. If your girlfriend or your wife says, “If you really love me, you would do this.” That’s their story. It’s not your story. You know whether you love them or not, so not allowing yourself to buy into that story that someone else has, unless it’s true for you.

The changing of the story is just I like to, one thing that helps me to tie this
together and apply it in different areas in my life is the stories that we have
about what we’re capable of fitness wise, so we did part of this thing that I just did, we did a lot of crossfit, and I had never done crossfit before and it’s incredible, the I went into it thinking it’s going to be tough. I’m not going to be able to do as much as everybody else, but a couple of things. Number 1, being part of a group that’s pushing you along, I was able to do a lot more than I thought I could, and there was this other guy in the group who is considerably overweight and came into it and every time we did any of the workouts, he had this look on his face of I cannot do this.

One of the leaders, one of the trainers that was there, that was essentially what he kept telling himself, to telling him, he’d walk up to him and said, “Just tell yourself a different story. You tell yourself this story that you can’t do it, that you’re not capable, that you don’t have the endurance. You don’t have the strength. Just tell yourself a different story.” That guy showed up to the workouts in a way that was incredible. He finished everything that we did, was able to complete everything, and he kept being surprised with himself. This is the funny thing. He kept being surprised with what he was able to do time after time after time after time, when the true story was he could do all that stuff because he did.

That really helps for me. I don’t know, some people aren’t quite as in touch
with what happens in fitness and some people are really capable fitness wise so that might be harder to understand, but for me, just understanding that the story that I was telling myself about what I was capable of fitness wise wasn’t true, and I proved it to myself because I just showed up and did more than I thought I could. If I just go into it with a story, instead of saying, “Oh this is where I’m at.”

Another guy, who’s a huge crossfitter, huge both physically and huge, meaning he spends a lot of time doing crossfit, he shot a video I watched it the other day, and he said, “The story I was telling myself about these certain types of workouts was that I was just a middle of the pack guy, and that’s what I had allowed myself to do and so every time we show up and do one of these workouts, I would just be in the middle of the pack, and I move forward.” He was like he’d come back from this thing, and he realized, “I can just tell myself a different story and then I wouldn’t have to be a middle of the pack guy.” Because he didn’t want to be a middle of the pack guy.

He just said he decided, “I’m going to tell myself a different story.” I don’t think he was the first in the group but he performed way better because he decided to tell himself a different story about how the world was.

Joshua: That’s powerful and just a little mindset switch that you can make to have a huge productivity increase in whatever area of life. I love that, Bret. That’s awesome.

I’m going to close out this show, and we’ve sat in the mindset area or territory for a while now, but I do want to know what is something that you’ve adopted as a ritual, whether that’s a daily, weekly, monthly ritual that has helped you reach a new level of success? I say that very curious personally, because I’ve seen you, your energy, the tone of your voice, I mean everything has changed in I feel like the last 4 to 6 months. I’m curious what rituals have changed.

Bret: There’s a lot of them, but I think one specific one that I’ll talk to is it’s a
combination of meditation, again which is just creating space. Just setting a
timer for 20 minutes and just quieting your mind, it just helps creating space. The second one honestly is shipping the messages of the lessons that you’re learning. For me, it’s been every day, I’ll read, and right now I’m reading in the New Testament, and then also I’ll read — I’m reading Tribes by Seth Godin. Instead of just thinking, “Oh that was a cool lesson,” and then it being gone, the thing for me, and this starts to solidify these thoughts and principles in my mind is I’ll journal it, write it down, but then I’ll shoot a video and explain where I’m at, what I’m thinking about it and put it on Facebook.

Mostly, I don’t really care if people like it or if they want it. It’s not about being the guy that’s got good content. It’s about me saying it to a camera and then putting it live somewhere. You have to be real about it.

Joshua: You have to be real about it, and you know that it’s going to be out in the world, so you internalize it differently. That is huge. I love that. Wow, man I’m fired up. I haven’t even had coffee today, Bret. That’s pretty impressive. Well thank you so much.

Bret: By the way, in case you don’t know, everybody that’s listening, him being fired up about it is a big deal. I know how much him being fired up without coffee means.

Joshua: Yes, you’ve observed me in a coffee shop and how I’d just wreck that place, because I needed to try one of everything twice. Oh man, that was a good time. That was a good time. Well thank you for coming on the show, Man. I really appreciate it. If individuals who are listening to this want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Bret: You can send me an email. You can look me up on Facebook,
facebook.com\bretwardjames or just shoot me an email,
bretmartineau@gmail.com. It’s B-R-E-T-M-A-R-T-I-N-E-A-U@gmail.com.

Joshua: Awesome, all right. Thanks, Bret.

Bret: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Infusioncast. Struggling to embed Infusionsoft web forms in your WordPress website? Head over to infusioncast.co and download our free WordPress plugin Infusionforms. Infusionforms allows you to easily embed beautiful Infusionsoft forms into any WordPress website with a simple short code. Thanks again for listening and we’ll talk to you in the next episode.

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