Get This Off My Chest

I left Keap in December 2024. It's been long enough that I can say what I need to say with some perspective.

My first stint at Infusionsoft, back in 2013, was genuinely great. It set me up to believe that company culture and core values could actually mean something. I believed in the product, I believed in the mission, and I was thrilled to serve small business owners who were implementing something truly revolutionary. My admiration for those customers was immense.

So when I came back years later, it was because of them. I had several years of experience not only being among them, but being one of them: a Keap user, which is a phrase that carries weight in my mind. Keap users – Infusionsoft users – are a special breed.

People like Mallory Balnis, a Keap Certified Partner who leaned on me when she was frustrated, and had every right to be. Once, she received a promotional email for the annual user conference after she'd already paid full price. I got her ticket upgraded to VIP, including a meet-and-greet with Robert Herjavec. That's how you serve a customer: I saw a wrong, I put my name on fixing it, and I went to work. That's what caring looks like in practice.

People like Mark Penney, a highly technical partner who has served a ton of Keap clients, and faces a familiar challenge: with much of Keap's user base migrating to other platforms, he is forced to do the same. That's not easy, and that's not abstract to me.

People like Paul Sokol, who wrote the Infusionsoft Cookbook, who helped me personally more than once, and who has maintained a loyalty to this ecosystem that I respect.

These were my people. This was why I came back.

A couple of months before I left Keap, I attended a weeklong on-site meeting with the product team. It was one of the most productive meetings I'd been part of in a long time. In my opinion, Keap was finally moving in the right direction. "Death by 1,000 cuts" made it onto the annual priorities list, which meant someone was finally feeling what the community had been screaming for years. I left that meeting on a high.

Before my flight home, I went to the Monkeypod Grove, a private Facebook group composed largely of Keap users organized by Greg Jenkins of Monkeypod Marketing, and I celebrated. I'd been a member of that group for over a decade. These were my friends. My message was optimistic and hopeful, and it was received that way by the people it was intended for. I got on my flight, full of optimism. It felt great.

The gist of what I said: I just finished this awesome meeting. Keap has failed customers hundreds of times, but things are looking up. I'm working hard to represent your needs.

A friend and colleague pulled that message up on his screen in an internal meeting. It was screenshotted and shared among people who were newer to Keap, including my boss. Without the ten-year history of that community, without the context of what those users had been through, my message read very differently. It came across as: these guys suck, they don't know what they're doing, but I'm here to save the day, and they're finally listening.

I understand how it landed that way. I really do.

But here's what I was actually doing with the "I" language, which I used deliberately: Keap had become so corporate that longtime users had grown averse to "we" language. "Please DM us with your app ID and we will..." sounds like a robot. It carries the weight of every broken promise. I was willing to put my name on it. I, Brett Fairbourn, will field your questions and do the best I can. My position was Customer Marketing Manager, and zero people reported to me. Personal ownership felt not just appropriate but necessary, especially in a community I'd been part of for over a decade.

My plane landed. Airplane mode off. My manager told me to delete the post.

I deleted it immediately and wrote: "Apparently I said something I shouldn't have, so apologies for the disappearing message."

I got a message about that comment, too.

Marketing and Product chiefs were upset. One of them told me, "It doesn't feel like we're on the same team." The other told me it was my duty to speak highly of the brand. I was brought into a disciplinary meeting with HR. They said I had shared confidential information. The "confidential" thing turned out to be that we were exploring ways to integrate the automation builder with more tools. That was years overdue. We absolutely better have been doing that.

And then, in that disciplinary meeting, I was told my "enmeshment" with customers was a problem. That's the one that still gets me.

The enmeshment. The thing they hired me for. I had 13 years of history with this community. I understood and empathized with customers deeply, and yes, I'll own that some of that is pathological. I have a tendency to overcommit. I am incapable of half-assing it. But I wasn't handing out discounts, I was offering empathy. I was offering honesty and the willingness to take personal ownership and go to work. I was applauding the company for turning over a new leaf, and I got punished for mentioning the track record.

The fact that Keap had failed longtime users hundreds of times was not an opinion. It was a well-established narrative of the community. Conversations in Keap's channels and in the Grove often concerned navigation away from Keap. The when and the how, not the why. Everyone knew the why.

When Keap was acquired by Thryv, I was given an offer. I was the only person who didn't sign.

I want to be clear about that, because I know a lot of people were let go, and they deserve our sympathy. I was not let go; I made a choice, and it was a risky one. But I had watched the company make its decision, and the decision wasn't the customer. I knew it would only get worse as the product became a property of a larger, more corporate entity. So I made my choice.

I'm telling this story not to relitigate it, and not to throw anyone under the bus. Honestly, I'm telling it because as the title says, I needed to get this off my chest. But if it lands somewhere useful, I hope it's here: Mallory deserves to know I was fighting for her in that room. Mark deserves to know I see what he's navigating. Paul deserves to know his loyalty, complicated as it is, makes sense to me even when I don't feel it.

And honestly? I want the people still inside systems like that one to recognize the pattern. I understood how my message landed with the unintended audience. I own that. But when the disciplinary meeting with HR centers around "this employee cares too much about customers," that's information worth sitting with for a while.

The corporations will make their choices. It's up to the people to be candid and real.

I left and started my own business. And I've referred away more prospects than I've taken on, because I knew someone else could serve them better. I've suffered for my love of customers, and I'm going to keep putting the customer first anyway.