Clate Mask had a law degree, an MBA and a question for the relatives who wanted him to join their software business: were they getting paid? The answer was no. They were, however, having fun. As recruitment pitches go, it required a generous definition of compensation.
His brothers-in-law, Scott and Eric Martineau, had started the business in 2001. Mask joined the following year. The programmers would write the software; he would handle practically everything else. Sales belonged to him. So did shopping and cleaning. A chief executive title could wait. The toilet could not.
That division of labor is a useful place to begin with Mask, who went on to lead Infusionsoft, later renamed Keap, for more than two decades. His subject has always been the owner who discovers that independence comes with a remarkably long list of chores. He has sold that owner software, written books for that owner and interviewed that owner. Today, as CEO of PHX FWD, he is helping software founders in Arizona work through their next set of decisions.
Eight years of school, then the sales desk
Mask’s route into entrepreneurship took a lengthy detour through education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Arizona State University, then an MBA and a law degree at Brigham Young University. In his telling, the combined graduate program made the total eight years of college. He wanted the education even though he doubted he would spend much time practicing law.
He told his wife, Charisse, about that doubt as they were starting law school. Her response was an entirely reasonable question about why he was doing it. The degrees also came with debt: he has described owing $100,000. His original plan was to pay that down before starting a business. Entrepreneurship was on the calendar, somewhere beyond the bills.
His interest had begun closer to home. As a teenager, he watched his mother run an interior design business, and noticed friends’ parents who owned companies. Ownership appealed to him before he knew precisely what he wanted to own. By April 2002, he was consulting for the Martineaus on lead generation and sales. In July, he joined full time as an equal partner.
There is something pleasingly untidy about this beginning. Years of preparation delivered him to a company where he had to find customers. The expensive education had its uses, but the immediate examination was whether somebody would buy.
The chore that became a company
The founders’ original motives were practical. They wanted freedom from a boss and a way out of debt. Mask has been unusually willing to describe those motives without polishing them into a grand founding declaration. The company’s broader purpose emerged from the work, including its difficult early years.
That experience helps explain the audience he kept choosing. Small business owners can be responsible for selling, delivering, invoicing and remembering to contact the person who asked for a quote last Tuesday. Each task is manageable on its own. Together they can turn a promising business into an elaborate memory test.
Infusionsoft developed around sales and marketing automation for those businesses. Customer relationship management put customer information in one place. Automated follow-up made it possible to act on that information repeatedly. The proposition was grounded in work that owners already recognized: finding a prospect, keeping in touch and turning a conversation into a paying customer.
For Mask, the appeal extended to what happened after the work was done. A saved hour could be spent finding another customer. It could also be spent at home. That second possibility keeps appearing in his account of entrepreneurship, sometimes in language about freedom and sometimes in decisions about how to arrange an ordinary week.
A seat for Tanner in Boston
In 2014, Infusionsoft was working toward a $55 million funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures. Mask needed to travel to Boston for an important meeting. His son Tanner, then 18, was preparing to leave on a two-year church mission. Summer was ending; work on the investment was intensifying.
The usual solution would have been a compressed trip: fly overnight, attend the meeting and fly back. Mask made calls instead, asking whether Tanner could come along. He got permission. Father and son traveled together, and Tanner had an opportunity to see the business world from inside a consequential meeting.
The story is modest in its mechanism. He asked. People agreed. A business obligation became time together. It did not require a speech about priorities, although it makes a fairly convincing illustration of them.
It also gives substance to a phrase that can become decorative in a corporate biography: family comes first. Here, the competing demands were specific. There was a funding meeting with a destination and a son with a departure approaching. Mask changed the travel arrangement. The calendar did some of the explaining.
Capital arrived. The small business stayed.
By then, Infusionsoft had attracted institutional investors. Its 2013 Series C brought $54 million, led by Goldman Sachs. That October, Goldman Sachs also selected Mask among its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs at the Builders + Innovators Summit. The recognition placed a founder serving small businesses in a room devoted to building enduring companies.
The distinction mattered because small business software was the company’s chosen market. Mask’s early customer problems remained recognizable even as its financing grew more elaborate. An owner still needed to respond to an inquiry, organize a customer record and collect payment. Investment gave the company resources; it did not make those tasks disappear.
In January 2019, Infusionsoft renamed the company Keap and introduced a product bearing the new name. The expansion targeted small service businesses, including home repair and business consulting. The name was intended to evoke the persistence of owners who keep going, serving and growing. A software brand had borrowed its philosophy from a verb.
The accompanying product work addressed a stubborn difficulty: owners were juggling several tools to schedule appointments, communicate, quote and get paid. Easier software was part of reaching more of them. For a company devoted to removing chores, the act of using the software had to earn its own place on the list.
Six keys, and a life outside the lock
Mask and Scott Martineau published the first Conquer the Chaos in 2010. It became a New York Times bestseller. A revised second edition by Mask appeared in 2024, with the subtitle The 6 Keys to Success for Entrepreneurs. The recurring question was how to grow a company while retaining the time and freedom that made ownership attractive.
His framework begins with the person running the company: mindset, a vision for life and a rhythm of execution. It then moves into business strategy, automation, and leadership and culture. The order gives personal aims a place before business machinery begins making demands. A calendar and a company plan have to fit into the same life.
Mindset
Life vision
Execution rhythm
Strategy
Automation
Leadership & culture
These ideas lend themselves to small, unglamorous applications. A recurring review gives a decision a scheduled home. An automatic reminder can spare someone a repeated message. Clear priorities help a team decide what to work on next. Each is less theatrical than a founder staying late, which may explain why the founder sometimes overlooks it.
Mask also returns to the people around the owner. In advice prepared for 2025, he recommended working on mindset, reimagining business strategy and setting aside time for personal and business growth. Achievement can absorb a person’s vocabulary. His argument leaves room for other words.
The sale, and the next room
Thryv announced its agreement to acquire Keap in October 2024, describing an $80 million cash transaction subject to adjustments. The deal closed on October 31. For Mask, it marked a change after more than two decades leading the company. By February 2025, he had taken another chief executive role, this time at PHX FWD, a nonprofit supporting Phoenix software companies.
The move connected him with Gregg Scoresby, the founder of PHX FWD and PHX Ventures. The two had discussed Arizona’s software community for years. Mask described speaking with founders, investors, academics and people working in economic development as he considered how to bring that community together. He also heard from software professionals who wanted to keep working in the industry while living in the Phoenix area.
That last detail is revealing. Geography can become another choice a founder feels obliged to surrender. PHX FWD’s ambition is to make Phoenix a leading software city by 2035, giving builders a stronger network where they already are. The work involves people, programs and relationships, with fewer opportunities to solve a problem by adding a button.
“Phoenix has everything it needs to be a software leader”
Clate Mask, on taking the PHX FWD role in 2025
Advice has a timing problem
PHX FWD organizes founder cohorts around stages of growth. The premise is practical: founders hiring their first employees and founders managing a larger organization need different conversations. A suggestion can be sensible and still arrive several years too early. Mask’s experience is being applied to that question of timing.
The current Mastermind program places founders with peers at a similar stage, with coaching, structured meetings and accountability. It includes office hours and a company building curriculum. The setup makes advice a recurring relationship. Someone can bring a decision to the group, try an approach, and return with what happened.
There is a connection here to his podcast work. The Conquer the Chaos conversations give other owners room to explain what they have learned. His June 2024 PHX Founders interview with Scoresby offered the same opportunity in reverse: a founder taking time to examine his own development as a leader.
Mask’s career began with relatives trying to persuade him to join their company. It has brought him to rooms where founders help one another decide what comes next. He understands the appeal of owning a business, and the chores that arrive with it. After selling software to make some of those chores easier, he is working on the conversations around the rest. Independence, it turns out, can use a little company.