Month: February 2016

Franchisee Success Profile: Tom Mauer

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FRANCHISEE SUCCESS PROFILE: TOM MAUER

Tom Mauer

Market: Weed Man Springfield-Hartford in Massachusetts

Number of Locations: In January 2016, I purchased four additional territories, so we now operate nine territories in Western Massachusetts and Northern Connecticut.

Education: I received an Associate’s Degree in Landscape Management from Springfield Technical Community College, and graduated from UMass Amherst with a Bachelor Degree.

Career Background: Prior to becoming a Weed Man franchisee, I owned a landscape company with my partners. We operated a full-service landscape business—complete with lawn care, snow plowing, etc.—and were trying to grow the lawn care side of our business. We were struggling to achieve our growth marks and had worked with marketing companies, but I wanted more than just good looking brochures and signage that they provided. I started looking at franchises for help with branding and marketing, as well as improving efficiency in our operations. That’s when we were introduced to Weed Man USA and decided to purchase a franchise.

I’ve always had a love for the green industry and my partners and I owned the landscaping business for 20 years before we purchased Weed Man as on add-on business. Once I saw the depth of support from Weed Man and the experience of the people driving the franchise, I sold my share of the landscaping business to focus solely on the growth of my Weed Man territories.

What are you most proud of so far as a Weed Man franchisee? Creating a great growth opportunity for my employees and building a team who was awarded the 2015 Weed Man Award of Excellence.

What is the key to your success? My key to success is just to be absolutely committed to following the plan and systems set in place by Weed Man. It’s important to trust the franchise– there is nothing to be gained by trying to do it on your own when you have proven tools and processes to grow your business.

What’s next for you and your franchise? I was recently honored as Weed Man USA’s 2015 Award of Excellence recipient and received the Marketing Performance (over $1.5 million) award at the company’s annual conference. Both awards are testament that I made the right decision to go with Weed Man to achieve the business growth I was seeking, along with the support system of meticulous planning and marketing plans. I’ve recently purchased an additional franchise territory and am thrilled to be expanding our service area. With continued growth, our team is excited about new opportunities for employees to grow with the company. As we develop our people and build bench strength in our staff, we plan to look for additional areas to consider for expansion.

If you’re interested in learning more about franchise opportunities in your area, visit us at www.weedmanfranchise.com or call 888-321-9333.

Franchisee Success Profile: Andy Kurth

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Andy Kurth

FRANCHISEE SUCCESS PROFILE: ANDY KURTH

Market: Madison, Wisconsin

Number of Locations: 6

Education: I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and received my degree in Soil Science with an emphasis in Turf Management and Agri-business.

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 six offices in the Midwest.

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 six 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 experience 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 the 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 16,000 customers in the past year and hire nearly 300 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? 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 Texas and Colorado 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.

If you are interested in learning more about franchise opportunities in your area, visit us at www.weedmanfranchise.com or call 888-321-9333.

New Year. New Technology. New Beginning?

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At Weed Man, we’re constantly aiming to improve the overall experience for our customers, all while helping our franchisees better their businesses and innovating to stay aligned with industry trends. Over the past 45 years, not a lot has changed in terms of Weed Man’s business plan, but with technology booming, it’s important that the brand continues to grow in the digital space.

Saying this, customers, franchisees and potential Weed Man owners can expect our new website to launch TODAY! Are you interested in seeing our new look? The easy-to-navigate design and image-based content is what the new and improved Weed Man site is all about. Visit us at www.weedmanusa.com!

Not only does Weed Man offer top-of-the-line marketing support, the head office team is also available for help in administration, agronomics, social media and so much more! We even take care of franchisees’ public relation needs. And to take results to the next level in 2016, our PR firm has added a wide array of new technologies to help extend our reach to thousands of additional media outlets, both traditional and online. The new platforms provide increased media monitoring and results tracking for the whole brand, nationwide.

Check out some of our latest secured placements below:

When it comes to creating a name for ourselves online, it’s safe to say we’re doing a pretty good job. A new website, numerous secured placements, both local and national, and not to mention, we’re also very active on social media! Want to see for yourself?

Check us out on social:

A new year means new technology and many new things to come for Weed Man! Are you interested in a new beginning? If you’re interested in learning more about opportunities in your area, contact us today at 888-321-9333or visit www.weedmanfranchise.com.

New Year