Clate Mask co-founded Keap and has been an integral part in the success of the automation and CRM system. Throughout his 20+ years as CEO of the company, he learned a lot. But along the way, he didn’t just discover what it takes to grow a thriving software business and manage a productive, happy team. He also learned what it takes to thrive personally while you grow professionally.
Unfortunately, this is rare for entrepreneurs. Most live as if they have to sacrifice their personal life and happiness in order to achieve their business dreams, but that’s simply not true.
It’s Clate’s goal to help entrepreneurs and their teams achieve true success personally and professionally, so he provided his top three tips below that he recommends all business owners follow in 2025. Check them out and add them to your new year’s to-do list.
Shift your mindset
Before you set out to do anything in your business, Clate’s first rule is to tackle your mindset. Why? Because it’s where everything you do flows from, and if it’s suffering, so will everything else eventually.
Clate put it best when he said, “Chaos exists in the mind of the entrepreneur … And so if we want to be successful, if we want to achieve that balanced growth in our business and life and achieve this freedom we want, we've got to get things right in our minds.”
So, to shift your mindset into one that will benefit your business rather than harm it, follow these steps:
- Decide you’re going to be successful: This means you quiet the extremely loud voices of doubt and abandon any thought that goes against your success. It’s not easy and it needs to be cultivated every single day, but it is possible. And it will pay off.
- Get excited about your business: Excitement may start to dwindle as you get years into building your business, but you can change that. Remind yourself what you’re doing, who you’re helping, and why you chose this path in the first place. This will help you develop a calm confidence and sense of excitement to keep pushing forward.
- Reframe failure: This doesn’t mean you have to rejoice at failure or deny being disappointed when you fall short. However, it does mean you have to turn it into a positive by learning the lesson that comes with it and moving on with more knowledge than you had before.
All of these steps require disciplined optimism, which will help you achieve your dreams and build a positive personal life too. Plus, it will help you as you move on to the next steps of achieving true entrepreneurial success.
Reimagine your business strategy
This next piece of advice from Clate involves narrowing down the goals of your business and coming up with a solid strategy that will serve as your north star as you work toward your goals. Developing a strategy involves two areas: the company and the customer.
Company: The most effective company strategies clearly outline your overarching purpose, values and mission.
- Purpose
This is the core “why?” of your business, and it should last forever. It’s what helps you make decisions on what to pursue and what to avoid. - Values
Your business’s values outline how exactly you and your team operate. They are behavioral elements that guide your entire organization and help you bring your purpose to life. - Mission
This isn’t the broad mission statement that you might be thinking. Instead, you’ll need a hyper-targeted, destination-oriented mission that shows where you intend to go and unites your team members under a specific future goal. A good mission statement is qualitative and quantitative, and it goes something like this “We will accomplish [X] in 3 years.”
Customer: A customer strategy is defined in the Conquer the Chaos Course as the “end-to-end experience that an individual has as it pertains to their experience with your brand.”
Essentially, this is the experience that your audience begins the moment they first engage with your brand, all the way until they become raving fans who refer others. And the interesting thing is that you have one already. If you have even just one customer, you have a customer strategy whether you designed it intentionally or not.
But it’s not enough to leave this strategy up to chance, so what should you do?
Start by creating a timeline. In the middle of that timeline, put the point where someone makes a purchase. Then, extend it out in both directions, defining what you want to happen before the purchase and after.
As you build out every touchpoint your customers should have with you, you can use our Perfect Customer Lifecycle framework, which boils down to three actions: Collect leads, convert clients, and create fans.
These broad categories will help guide you as you map your customer strategy, ensuring each interaction you have with your audience has a purpose.
Set aside time for personal and business growth
The final step Clate recommends you take with you into the new year is a renewed dedication to personal and professional growth.
Building a successful life and business is an ongoing process, and you have to be careful not to get out of balance as the year progresses. He recommends setting aside dedicated time to develop the personal and business keys to success. These keys are what will keep you balanced and propel you toward a year of growth.
You’re probably wondering what those keys are and how you can achieve them. Fortunately, Clate has outlined them extensively for you, and you can use the following Conquer the Chaos resources to jumpstart your 2025 journey:
The course: This self-paced course outlines the six keys to success and dives deeper into the concepts outlined in this blog. You’ll find Clate’s entire gameplan for balanced growth and get even more details on how to fulfill the steps above. Log into Keap Academy or create your free account to get started.
The podcast: This podcast explores the real-life results of implementing the six keys to success and features guests who have created the businesses of their dreams without sacrificing their personal lives. You’ll hear their success stories, their failures and their top tips so you can do the same. Find the Conquer the Chaos Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
The book: If reading is your jam, then dive into the “Conquer the Chaos” book. Clate Mask created this second edition of his New York Times bestseller to give you fresh wisdom and details on what it takes to escape the hustle, grow your business, and reach your personal and professional goals.
Are you ready to conquer 2025 and make it your best year yet? Follow Clate’s recommendations — the exact ones he used to scale the best CRM for small business — as you kick off the new year and use the resources above to keep you on track. It won’t be long until you look up and realize you’re crafting a life and business you love.
