Madison/Milwaukee/Green Bay/Janesville, WI; Elgin/Naperville/Rockford, IL; Denver/Colorado Springs, CO; Austin, TX; Boise, ID; Iowa City, IA; Salt Lake City/Ogden, UT
Name: Andy Kurth
Markets: Madison/Milwaukee/Green Bay/Janesville, WI; Elgin/Naperville/Rockford, IL; Denver/Colorado Springs, CO; Austin, TX; Boise, ID; Iowa City, IA; Salt Lake City/Ogden, UT
Number of Locations: 14
Education: Degree in Soil Science with an emphasis in Turf Management and Agri-business, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Career Background: I got involved in the lawn care business starting in high school. During the summers, I worked for a company full-time installing irrigation systems. I began attending college right around the same time that my father purchased his first Weed Man location in Madison and I spent my summers working for him. It was great to begin that way with the company because I was able to learn many different roles within the business. After college I began working full-time for Weed Man selling franchises. Then, by chance, I was given the opportunity to work as a Sales Manager in my dad’s office, which I did for a couple more years before I was promoted to General Manager. Today, I am the president for our 13 offices across 7 states and growing.
How Has Your Father Influenced You as a Business Leader? My father Terry Kurth has been a great resource and someone that I go to simply to bounce ideas off of. I worked alongside my dad and together we grew our Weed Man from one location to 14 through building positive relationships with employees and customers. He is a great communicator, which is one of the areas where I try to model my leadership from the example he set. I’m very thankful that he allowed me the freedom to run the business my way and allowed me to make some mistakes along the way. Now that my dad has stepped back a little from the business, I feel much more confident making decisions that impact the business because I have those personal experiences to draw on. But there are still times when I need his advice and he’s always willing to help when I ask for it.
What Are You Most Proud of So Far As a Weed Man Franchisee? Being able to provide opportunities for advancement to our most valuable team members and show how much we appreciate their dedication. We work hard on generating a culture of talent development. When I took an operational role, I wanted to provide our team with a bigger vision of where we can go and who is going to help us get where we want to be. I truly believe that the backbone of this country is small business, because we are providing people within the community with an opportunity to give back to the communities in which they live. It’s amazing to think that we’ve been able to serve close to 47,000 customers in the past year and hire nearly 250 employees to help take our business to the next level.
Another proud moment for me and my team was receiving an American flag from an Iraq war veteran. While serving his 5th tour in Iraq we volunteered through an organization to care for his lawn so his family would have one less worry while he was away. One day he surprised us at the office with an American flag that had been flown in their camp in honor of our service to his family. The flag hangs in my office as a reminder of the impact that we are making every day.
What’s Next For You and Your Franchise(s)?
The efforts at developing our team and providing them with new opportunities is starting to pay off. We put our valued team members in a position to expand into Utah and Iowa this year. We’ll be working on ways our team can stay informed and work together even though our network is a lot more spread out. It’s a great challenge to have and we look forward to leading the way in developing new systems and processes to accelerate our expansion.