Initiate autopilot

Brothers Aaron and Jason Thomas have been building businesses together for years — they co-founded BugBros Pest Control and later acquired Don’s Lawn in Oklahoma City. One of the reasons the brothers chose to enter the lawn care and pest control space, was that it’s easy to automate and create cookie-cutter processes within — allowing for them to have more time working on the business rather than in it. 

The Thomas brothers spoke with attendees at the Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference during their session “Put Your Business on Autopilot with Automation.” During the session, they asked attendees how many could confidently step away from the business for an extended period of time and trust that things would run seamlessly without them.

“That’s what we want to help you get to — whether you’re taking a week off, a month off or six months off,” Aaron says. “We’ve set up hundreds and hundreds of automations within our business.”

Though Aaron notes getting to that point isn’t easy and takes a substantial amount of time and money to get things automated.

“You have to be willing to invest a ton of time and effort into this. I’m talking nights and weekends,” he adds.

Jason and Aaron suggest companies looking to save their employees some much valued time start by automating these processes: appointment reminders, sales quoting and follow-ups, customer and employee on-boarding, upsell opportunities and reviews.

“We’ve tried about every automation tool out there,” Aaron notes. “There’s nothing more value than time — it’s our one nonrenewable resource.”

By implementing these automations, Jason says the company has made 50% more revenue with the same number of staff members. They have also sold 350 new customers (about 19%) without direct communication with the customer before signing on.

“All of our staff is now higher compensated,” Jason notes. “The field and office staff are both more efficient, less stressed and a lot happier.”

The Thomas brothers liken automating their lawn care and pest control businesses to running things like McDonalds or a simpler chain restaurant — every time you go though, regardless of location, you have the exact same experience.

“It helps you make sure you aren’t letting things fall through the cracks,” Jason notes of automation.

And for those wary that automating their business will make it lose it’s personal connections and family atmosphere — Aaron and Jason disagree.

“A lot of people have the misconception that you take the heart and soul out of a business by automating,” Aaron says. “But you’re putting your heart and soul in by doing that.

“Automating allows you to focus on the things that really matter,” he adds. “The quicker you can get to doing those things and not the meaningless tasks you can pass off to a machine — the better.”

Taking the time to automate also allows for employees to focus on what really matters instead of the tedious day-to-day tasks, which the duo say they will appreciate tremendously.

“Once you set up the processes…it’s easier to keep quality employees — you can spend your time investing in them instead of doing these tasks,” Aaron says.

For automation to be implemented successfully, Jason and Aaron note that every business needs to find their “why” in terms of what’s driving them to make the changes. The pair say their why was simple — freedom.

“If you don’t have a big enough why you won’t take the necessary time to automate the business,” Jason says.

“Our goal is to work ourselves out of a job as quickly as possible,” Aaron jokes. “Because of the systems we set up, I was able to take six months off when my son was born.”

While the benefits of automating have clearly outweighed the implementation process and costs for the duo, Jason says the greatest takeaway has been how it’s made both employees and clients happier.

“Communication is very key,” Jason says. “It’s all about sending the right messaging to the right people at the right time. It can lead to a better customer and staff experience.

“One of our mantras is crazy happy employees create crazy happy customers,” he adds.