“We've seen consistent growth between 35 and 40% year after year.”

The center of chaos

Ten years ago, Mike Callahan was trying to handle every aspect of his lawn care business on his own.

“Before we started using Keap I was probably the single point of failure. Everything had to run through me… I was the center of chaos as a lot of my employees said at that point.”

Every part of the lawn care business had to be done manually: sales, estimates, follow-ups, adding customers to the CRM, and beyond.

“It relied on either me or somebody in the office to actually do it. So we had a lot of the pieces together, but they relied on someone to tell them when to do it, how to do it and make sure it was done.”

Because he was working a minimum of 70 hours every week — sometimes up to 100 hours — Mike’s business ultimately ended his marriage. He knew he needed to make a change.

The power of Lifecycle Automation

Feeling like his business was robbing him of valuable time, Mike took to the internet to find a solution to get his business — and life — back on his own terms.

“[I] went on the internet and searched for solutions... and through that process we found Keap as an automation platform to start automating the manual and repetitive tasks in the business to start buying time back.”

He stumbled across Keap’s Lifecycle Automation framework, which was key to helping him identify the areas in his business where he was losing time and money. “It spoke to me because it really defined the areas of the business where hypothetically, well actually literally, we were throwing money out the window or into a trash can because we had holes in our sales funnel or our communication process,” Mike explains.

“It was a clear roadmap of what I needed to automate, and I used that as my blueprint to actually build out automations that allowed me to go from close to 100 hours a week to literally an absentee owner 30 days at a time.”

Finding balance through systems

Mike’s team had processes in place, but preparing to automate those processes in Keap forced them to focus on how they could improve. “It was really helpful for us to actually be forced to reevaluate some of the processes and systems that were outdated in the business,” Mike says.

“We started breaking down little chunks of the business and automating them one at a time. Those small wins really quickly, within a few weeks, created some massive wins as far as time and consistency in the process.”

Making automation feel personal

For those just starting with Keap, Mike recommends first using the tool to refine the lead capture and follow-up process.

“I would like to say before Keap we were following up five or more times over multiple communication channels, but the truth is no. Especially in the busy season, the ball would get dropped — but now, when it's automated, what should happen happens when it should. And the marketing and the branding is all set in standard ways. So no matter who is following up now through automation, it's standardized and actually converting better.”

His team’s biggest win? Creating a standardized estimate follow-up process using automated emails, automated texts, plus automated tasks that assigned his team members to call leads. “We've created a way to make follow-up automated, but make it actually feel personal based on where that customer is in the customer lifecycle,” Mike says.

He stresses the importance of the ability to customize this process in Keap. “Without segmentation and personalized automation, what you're really doing is spamming your client base and letting them know that you don't care about them. So by using a product like Keap, we're able to have personalized but automated conversations to each particular client or lead in the system.”

A new mission to help other businesses grow

After fully automating the lawn care company he’d run for 20+ years, Mike discovered a new purpose. “I really wanted to help other business owners take their life back from their businesses as the automations have done for us, or hopefully avoid the mistakes that we had and not have to go through that pain.”

Mike reached out to Keap and became a Certified Partner, and his SimpleGrowth team now helps other business owners in the lawn care and home cleaning industries implement a turnkey automation solution.

SimpleGrowth has cultivated remarkable success over the past few years. “With the processes that were automated in Keap — the follow-up, the sales pipeline, the referral commission tracking and systems — we've seen consistent growth between 35 and 40% year after year after implementing the processes in Keap for our partner program.”

Beyond the growth of his own business, Mike is thrilled that Keap helps him pursue his mission to help other business owners take back control of their time. “What drives me for my business day in and day out is the amazing culture and the team that really buys into our purpose,” Mike explains. “We help business owners take their life back from their business, and that is the goal.”