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How Leaders Lead with David Novak
#289: Kurt Kane, CEO, TruGreen – Fall in love with customer retention
01:04:58
Listen to this leadership podcast with Kurt Kane, CEO of TruGreen, and discover how to shift your focus from customer transactions to customer relationships.
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Today on the show, we have Kurt Kane. He's the CEO of TruGreen, which is the largest lawn care company in the United States. And after years of driving growth as CMO of Wendy's, Kurt saw the opportunity to grow Trugreen by leaning into long term customer satisfaction and retention. In this episode, you'll learn how to see your customers and their feedback in a whole new way. Light and revealed just how important it is to fall in love with customer retention if you want to grow your business. Enjoy this conversation and I'll see you at the debrief.
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David Novak
You know, Kurt, I was literally just at the Biltmore estate in North Carolina, and I found myself wondering what runs through your mind when you walk those grounds. Knowing that Trugreen is. Is the team responsible for keeping it looking world class. And believe me, it is world class.
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Kurt Kane
And one of the things that we're really proud of is when people that have amazing estates like that or professional venues or anything along those lines choose Trugreen to take care of their property. So it's one that we're really proud of. Takes a lot of work to get it right, but we think that the results really show just how much we care about it. So, yeah, really fortunate to partner with them.
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David Novak
You know, speaking of great lawns, I gotta ask you, Kirk, is your lawn better than your neighbors?
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Kurt Kane
Well, I probably get a little extra attention even without asking for it, but I actually have a neighbor who is all in on his own yard care, so he's tough to compete with. But we tried to make sure that we represent the brand really well. And we've also pestered all of our other neighbors to make sure they get on TruGreen too, so we can all look good together.
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David Novak
Yeah, I bet on your block you
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got 100% market share.
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Kurt Kane
Knowing you, we're trying to, but I also get a lot of attention, like I said. So sometimes you look up outside and there's three TruGreen trucks that have shown up at once. And that's not necessarily fair. So we try and keep it fair for everybody.
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David Novak
You know, for those who may not be familiar, give us a high level picture of Trugreen and what kind of business you're leading today.
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, Trugreen's a really interesting business. And I joined as CEO going back just over two years ago now. But we're effectively and primarily in the lawn treatment business. So our job is to make sure that your grass looks great. We keep the Weeds out, it grows healthily. It's a nice, thick, lush lawn. We don't mow the lawn. We leave that to other people locally. And as a result, we're really focused in on the treatment of the lawn itself. We also have other lines of business. We take care of tree and shrub and make sure that those are healthy. We've got a mosquito prevention business and a perimeter pest business as well. So we really try and bring together these different businesses that all work really well together to help people love their outdoor spaces, have lawns and exteriors, their homes that they're really proud of. And it all comes together really well.
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David Novak
You know, I asked the question about your neighbor's lawn and yours being better in a little bit of a tongue in cheek fashion here. But, you know, there's no question that people take a lot of pride in the lawns that they have. And it's really real, this competitiveness to have a great lawn. How do you tap into that mindset to connect emotionally with your customers?
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Kurt Kane
The heart of all of it is you gotta think about what perception do you want people to have of your home? How do you tap into people's kind of defining values? And like you said, the home is somebody's biggest investment under almost all circumstances. And so the pride that they can show in that really manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But for us, we've done a lot of work around this idea that we are the pros that pros trust, so you can have confidence that we're going to get it right for you every time. And where that was born out of was we have a PGA Tour partnership, and we're the official lawn care treatment provider of the PGA Tour, also of minor league baseball. And so if folks like Jason Day and Ben Griffin feel like we can get it right, we think we can probably get it right for you as well. And so that's how we tap into that idea. And we have a lot of fun with that in our communications and our advertising. And we've seen it really drive a lot of improvement in brand health over the past couple of years since we got involved with those programs.
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David Novak
How did that PGA sponsorship or partnership come about?
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Kurt Kane
We had a lot of discussions over time. We've been partnered with the PGA Tour in a number of different ways for quite some time, but I think we probably historically weren't necessarily using it as effectively as we could. We were more focused on on site activation at tournament sites rather than really going out and building the idea that in most neighborhoods and in most communities, the golf course or golf courses that are there tend to be the best grass around. And so that's where we started to leverage this PGA Tour idea, to be able to showcase that we were the ones, those folks trust to be able to get it right every day. So for us, it's been a really good partnership. We've activated it in a number of different ways over the past couple years. Jason Day has been amazing. Ben Griffin had a breakout year for us last year on the tour and in the way he represented in our communication. So it's been a really good partnership.
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David Novak
That's great. And you know, when you look back and you obviously you have lots of opportunities, you're highly talented, you could run a lot of companies. What was the big opportunity you saw at Trugreen that really made you want to take the job?
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Kurt Kane
You know, for me, I've spent the last, I've been at this 28 years now since getting out of graduate school after the Army. And I spent the last 28 years really helping transform mature brands that had either plateaued or gotten stuck and maybe gotten disconnected from the growth that they were really capable of driving. And so when I learned about the opportunity at TruGreen and the fact that they were looking for a new leader to come in, what I saw was a brand that had a lot of awareness. You know, people knew of it, but it wasn't necessarily growing at the rate that it could. And so that's the kind of opportunity that I love to be involved with. And I was coming out of spending almost nine years at Wendy's driving a meaningful operational and brand turnaround on that business. Before that, spending time at Yum Brands as you know, and other places before that. But it's just the kind of work that I love to do. And I felt like the marketing background I had combined with the fact that I'd worked in a lot of field driven operating environments was a really good connection. And, and so far we've been having a lot of fun doing it.
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David Novak
Yeah. What's something about, you know, what's something people think is true about TruGreen that you wish they knew the real story behind? I mean, how did it get to be true?
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Kurt Kane
Trugreen's grown a lot over, over the years. And you know, it started out, you know, 50 some odd years ago out of the Midwest, grew up out of Michigan and then expanded. And so I think a lot of people have a general perception of the brand as a big national brand. But what I wish more people knew was how local we really are. When you think about what we do every day, we've got multiple different agronomists on staff, multiple PhDs trying to make sure that whatever recipe of lawn care products we put on your lawn is customized all the way down to the county level. And so it's not just a one size fits all program like when you buy do it yourself products at a Home Depot or Lowe's. We really customize what we're doing using the science behind it. So I wish more people knew that. I wish more people knew that we partner with a lot of local universities to be able to work with their turf grass programs to be able to make sure that we're getting this right every day. So I think more people need to know that we need to tell that story more loudly than we do. But I wish more people were aware of just how local we really are.
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David Novak
Well, that's the true facts about your business. And the more you get them out, the better, right?
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Kurt Kane
That's for sure.
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David Novak
You've had quite the career. Packaged goods at Proctor and Gamble, food and beverage restaurants and now lawn care. What advice would you give people, Kurt, on who wonder whether their skills can really travel across industries?
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, I think it's been. I spent most of my career in food and beverage, as you mentioned, but it's also been a lot of different spaces of food and beverage. Like you said, packaged goods at Procter and Gamble, things like Sunny Delight juice drink, then Molson Coors and the beer business, totally different business, and then into PepsiCo, Frito Lay and on down the road. But I think to me what you have to look at is, you know, what are the things that are commonalities across the different experiences that you have and how do you draw from them? And I think to me, some of the commonalities that are there not just for my career, but across all these different experiences. Can you simplify to the things that matter most? Can you get people focused on where the upside lives in the business? And really importantly, can you get them excited about it? Can you be an optimist and create a vision for growth? And if you can do those three things really well, I think those skills travel across a lot of different categories. And that's been the experience that I've had and I've been fortunate to have success in carrying those things with me.
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David Novak
How did you simplify what matters most at TruGreen? What process did you use and how did you boil it down?
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Kurt Kane
You know, when I first got here, it was amazing. The team had probably 50 different initiatives that they were working on, all with the spirit of getting it right for the customer. But it wasn't necessarily all tied together. And so I took our leadership team away for a few days and we said, look, we're going to get this business down onto one page. We're going to get down to the metrics that matter most, and we're really going to talk about what it is that we do and make sure that everybody in the company can see how what they do every day is tied directly to the results that we get. And so we came up with a document that now hangs in every one of our branch locations. It's across all of our support centers that has our five strategic pillars. And if we got it right, and hopefully we did, those five strategic pillars won't be changing anytime in the future. But by getting it down to those five strategic pillars and the metrics that we use to measure success against those pillars, now we've got everybody literally on the same page. And to me, that's been a really powerful tool for us.
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David Novak
A lot of executives, they work hard to get that one sheet of paper and they get it framed and laminated, and it's up on the wall and never really goes anywhere. It's just like it's something that the guys did in the corner office that
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makes them feel good.
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You know, what do you do to really drive that deep in the organization so people understand your five pillars and you know how you're going to really grow the hell out of the business?
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, I think. And this is actually something I learned from you a long time ago. You may not remember, but I asked you a question in an off site that we were at together about how do you get people convicted around what you're trying to drive and what one thing you shared was that repetition is not a bad thing. Lean in and talk about what you want them to understand as often as you can. And even if you get bored of it, you need to keep saying it because everybody needs to hear it. I think the other thing is run the business around the tool. So not only do we have that laminated piece of paper, but if you look at the scorecards that we operate our leadership team meetings off of, if you look at how we report out our results, everything is pegged directly to those five pillars. And so as a result, it's a living and breathing tool that we utilize all the time. And that's why everybody, I think, feels connected to it. And I can tell you, when I first joined the Organization. We were very, very siloed in the way we were approaching our work. Our marketing team wasn't necessarily connected to our sales team, to our operations and production team as closely as they needed to be. So by having that one page, now we have the opportunity for everybody to be connected. And it's been amazing to see the results move as a result of what everybody has been using as this living tool to drive their behavior.
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David Novak
How do you go about repeating that message over and over again? What do you do as a CEO?
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Kurt Kane
When I first joined, we had 14 operating regions and I made it a point to get out to every one of those operating regions to be able to kick off that message. So to be able to take them through, first of all, introduce myself who I was, but to really drive a connection with them. Because as I mentioned at the outset, this is a very field, very local driven business, similar to a Frito Lay, similar to others that have a lot of route based density at the center of what the business is. So for me, I think it's really about getting out. And that's how I kicked it off, was to be able to connect with everybody at a local and regional level. And now it's consistently reinforcing and repeating this through all the conversations we have. Whether it's internal videos, town hall meetings, or just day to day meetings, consistently going back to this document as a powerful tool has really been effective for us.
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David Novak
Now, as you look into the future for TruGreen, what's the next big unlock you believe that could take the company to an entirely different level?
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Kurt Kane
You know, for years we focused on how do we grow our customer base by attracting new customers. What we were probably not as focused on as we should have been was how do we retain the existing customers that we do have. So we're very fortunate, as you mentioned, to have over 2 million customers that rely on TRUGREEN day in and day out. But for us, retention needs to be something that's at the very center of our business. We've got a subscription based model and we want to keep people in the business. And even the very first day I took over as CEO, we had a company wide video just to introduce myself because I was a stranger coming into the company at the time. And in that conversation I said, look, I want everybody here to fall in love with one word above all other. And that word is retention. Let's fall back in love with the customers we have today. Because the people we have in our business today as customers are the best customers. We're ever going to get. They're already with us. We. So let's really be incredibly passionate and loyal to them and make sure that they're wildly satisfied. And since that time, we've seen our net promoter score go up by over 20 points. Our retention's up over 300 basis points because we've been putting the customer first. And I think that, to me, is what's going to allow us to really get to the next level.
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David Novak
Overall, I want to really get into your leadership journey and go deep on it. And I want to start by taking you back, way back. Okay, you know, what's a. What's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today?
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Kurt Kane
I'm very fortunate. I've got a super close family, and I grew up originally in the south suburbs of Chicago and moved to Houston, Texas, halfway through high school. Growing up, I was really blessed with a mom who was a teacher, and so she was always passionate about getting me to sign up for things and get involved with things. And so I was consistently thrown into experiences where I had no reason to be involved in that experience and felt like I was always a little bit over my head. And I think because of that, because she was always curious and always wanted me to get involved in a number of different things, I've always been comfortable being uncomfortable and putting myself out there, and so I think that was incredibly important. My father was a big supporter as well, so he would help me try and figure out, once I got myself in over my head, how I could navigate through it. But I think those kinds of experiences, to me, have been invaluable. Where you find yourself in corporate leadership and what you learn really quickly when you're thinking about how do you grow a business, is that growth only comes from change. And by default, change makes people uncomfortable. So you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable really quickly. And I've been fortunate, even though I probably wouldn't have framed it that way when I was a kid, being put in uncomfortable situations a lot that have paid off longer term.
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David Novak
And you started your leadership journey in the United States army as a platoon leader. You know, what's a moment or lesson from that experience that you think about regularly?
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, you know, I was fortunately graduated from west point back in 1994 and then was pretty quickly deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as my first assignment. And that was not something I was specifically trained for. I was actually an air defense artillery officer. So my official job was supposed to be shooting down airplanes if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But my unit was deployed to Guantanamo Bay to actually build immigration camps because of a migrant crisis or an immigration crisis that was going on in Cuba at the time. And so I was placed. My platoon was one of the platoons in charge of running a camp in Guantanamo Bay, helping people through the immigration process. And I think the thing that stood out to me was we actually had our showers and latrines were flooding and backing up in this new camp. And I, at the time, grabbed a shovel and went out and started to help dig the hole to be able to help get these things cleaned out. And all the residents of the camp couldn't figure out why the camp leader was helping dig a hole that was very foreign to them coming out of the environment that they were from. So to see a leader roll up their sleeves and literally dig in was something that they were mystified by. But to me, it just was exactly what you're supposed to do, right? Which is you don't ask anybody to do anything you wouldn't do yourself. Even if it's an unpleasant task. It's time to literally roll up your shovels and roll up your sleeves and grab a shovel and start digging. In fact, that's probably the most important time that you can dig in is when things are difficult. And so that's probably an experience that stood out for me as one that really taught me about how important it is to be humble and grounded and connected to the work that needs to be done.
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David Novak
You say don't. I've heard you say this. Don't. Wear your rank, Wear your results, say more.
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Kurt Kane
First of all, results matter. And you want to say, are you capable of delivering what you promise? And when you look in the military or you look in corporate life, you can always tell the leaders that resonate with people, and those are the people that just get it done. You know, it's not about the position. It's not about positional authority. They are just motivating people because they're focused on the work and focused on the outcome. And those are the kinds of people I've always loved working for. I've always learned a lot from and have always been part of being able to drive really good results because of their leadership mindset. So I've tried to reflect that in my own career and try to model that in my own behavior, because it really is true that you can. When you find the right kind of leader that is willing to work shoulder to shoulder with you, it's incredibly inspiring and a lot of fun.
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David Novak
You know, you spent some time at Procter and Gamble, which is renowned for its capability to build world class brands. What'd you learn there about satisfying customers that you carried with you?
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, P and G was a great foundational experience, like you said, in kind of Brand Management 101 and Customer Perception. And I think for me, during my time at Proctor, probably the most important lesson was to really recognize you have to not only understand who makes a purchase, but who motivates a purchase. And the experience I would share was I was working on Sunny Delight juice drink, which had historically always advertised to moms and tried to convince them to bring Sunny D home to their kids, where kids at that time were starting to develop a lot more power in the home. We called it pester power, but you know, but P and G had never.
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David Novak
I love that one.
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, it's like they're going to bug mom to get what they want. And kids were having a bigger, bigger, a bigger and bigger voice. But at the time, P and G wasn't very good at advertising to kids. They hadn't done it. But I was fortunate. I had leaders that gave me the empowerment to be able to go out and figure out a plan to really figure out how to connect to what motivated kids and what made brands cool to them or interesting or what could really get them excited about a brand. And I was able to build a case for that. And so we really retargeted the brand. Rather than just talking to moms about how Sunny D had certain nutrition qualities that they might like, it was really all about getting kids to understand that Sunny D had the power of the sun in every bottle. And that was all about kid empowerment. And if you look at every movie that's out there that's popular with kids, it's all about, you know, kids coming out on top over the adults. And so there's a fundamental human truth about kids wanting to be empowered, that we were able to tap into and drive a lot of results. But underneath that it was P and G being perpetually curious about the customer and also being open to saying, do we need to redefine the customer to get a different result?
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David Novak
And then you were the marketing director at Coors. And you know, I've heard you say from your experience there that you can't like, you can't really act like the big guys if you want to compete. You know, talk a little bit more about that.
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, well, when I was with Molson Cores at the time I started, it was a joint venture, a little standalone joint venture. Called Molson usa. And, you know, we were trying to compete. We had a big presence in the northeast and regionally, but we were trying to compete with the brands like Budweiser and other giant players and act the same way that they did. But we were never gonna win that fight, given the fact that they had a lot bigger scale, they had a lot bigger dollars. And so for us, we threw out a lot of the traditional marketing tools and got a lot more guerrilla focused, a lot more aggressive in what we were doing on premise and in the bars. We stopped trying to buy media and started to try and create media that was very impactful. I'll give you a great example. We came up with an initiative called Twin Label Technology. And the idea was to make our bottles a conversation piece in bars so that they stood out as a media vehicle. But then on top of that, we went into bar areas. Faneuil hall in Boston is a big area of bars. And we wanted to buy outdoor, but Budweiser owned all of them. So we went to the landlords of the buildings and asked if we could buy their windows instead. And so it wasn't a traditional media tool, but we were able to go out and use something that had visibility in a very different way. And that ended up we're. We were very fortunate. We ended up winning. The first time I ever won a Cannes lion was because of that media campaign. But really impactfully, we were able to drive a lot of growth in that business because we were just relentless about trying to find new ways to engage that the big players were maybe overlooking because they were big, and that was really powerful for us.
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David Novak
You say that a brand should never over commit. What do you mean by that?
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Kurt Kane
Well, I think, to me, I think you have to find what's central to who your brand is. And I find that the brands get off track when they forget who they are. And during my time at Frito Lay, when I first joined Frito Lay, I was on the Doritos brand. And I know you have a lot of experience on that business. And when I joined the brand, where the brand was over committing was actually in the wrong direction. And that they were being very apologetic for Doritos being an indulgent snack. They were doing everything but embracing that. They were doing reduced fat Doritos, baked Doritos, rolled Doritos, everything but just being Doritos.
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David Novak
And people want to just eat some really good stuff.
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Kurt Kane
They just want some really great stuff. And so I still remember the brief we wrote, and it was based off of a Lot of insight work. But the central brief we wrote was Doritos is the kick ass snack that's second to none. Let's just be that the agency came back with the language of snack strong. And then because we landed on that, we were able to get so clear about it that we were able to have consumers take over our advertising. A program came out of that called Crash the Super bowl where we had a string of top 10 ads. And much of this was after I moved off the brand. But we'd gotten so focused on what the positioning was that I think the commitment to the right thing really paid off in very big dividends for the business as a whole. And we had a lot of fun with it. But I think you have to get true to what your brand is at the center before you can commit. Then you can go all in and then you can get over committed to it. And I think that can be good. But you got to make sure you're right before you do that.
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Podcast Host
I hope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that he talks about in this episode so that you can have some real practical takeaways to apply right away to your leaders, leadership and to your life. Stay tuned to the very end of the episode and I'll see you at the debrief.
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David Novak
You know, I always talk about how people don't wake up every day wanting to be a part of something mediocre. They want to be a part of something great. What's an example of how you inspire your team now to find a greater purpose in what they do?
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Kurt Kane
I talked about that strategic document and we came back and we said before we talk about the pillars, what's the mission that we're on? What are we part of? What's the vision and the mission? And sometimes those can just be generic words that are out there. But the vision statement we aligned to was we're going to be the best, fastest growing and most valuable lawn care company in the world. And the mission that we're on to get there is to plant a true green flag in every lawn. So I think by landing on that language, it gave us an opportunity to be able to really get people empowered locally. What does it take to win in your neighborhood? What does it take to win in your local branch area? Whatever your piece of trugreen is, how can you help us on this mission? And I think empowerment is one of those things that doesn't get talked about enough, because when you feel like you really can have an impact on how the work is getting done every day, you're a heck of a lot more motivated to follow through and go the extra mile. And so I, I think that's an example of how I've been trying to drive it and how we as a collective team have been focused on really empowering people to be successful.
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David Novak
At Trugeen, you talked about one of the ways how you go from industry to industry is there's commonalities and approaches that you can use that are basically going to work everywhere you go. Being focused on the customer is one of those basic truths. But has there been anything that you've had to unlearn? You know, you've been doing things one way for a long, long time. But has there been anything you had to unlearn as you went into, as you run this trugreen business?
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Kurt Kane
That's probably the thing I've had to unlearn sometimes. Like coming out of QSR background with Wendy's and, you know, and yum and time at Pizza hut. That was 15 years of my career. And one of the things that you learn there is if you get a promotion, right. And a message right, you can drive an immediate result. You launch something on Sunday, you know, by Wednesday, if that thing's working or not. And you can influence the outcome very quickly because you have the media dollars and the tools to be able to either drive a new message out or shift some of the things in the program. I think what I've had to unlearn a little bit is being too short term and start to think more long term about the relationship with the customer, how important that relationship is, how important it is to be able to drive a trust and a partnership between a customer and who's servicing them. And that's, you know, building a relationship is very different than driving a transaction. So to me, I think I had to unlearn the habit of trying to drive short term transactions and start to really embrace this idea of what long term relationships with a customer are all about. And that's a very different thing.
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David Novak
Thing. When you look at the business and you look at the experience you've had thus far, what's the biggest challenge that you face there? Tell us a story about that and what it's taught you.
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Kurt Kane
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge for me has been, as I mentioned, this idea of empowerment. I think for too many years we got far too centralized in our approach and I think people felt disempowered at the local level. And so I thought it was gonna be easier to drive this idea of empowerment and local accountability than it has proven to be. Not because we don't have great people who very much wanna get it right. But I think if you're told time and time again that a decision is not yours to make, then you start to believe people. And so I've spent the last two years really driving hard against this idea of empowerment and accountability. You may see on the wall behind me. Three words. Make your mark. That's a program that I brought with me. I first established it at Pizza Hut, I carried it on at Wendy's, and then have now brought it with me to TruGreen. And that's all about the idea of think about the legacy that you want to leave on the business, no matter what your role is, what position you have, and then really get committed to the things that you need to do to be able to make that idea a reality. That's how you're going to make your mark, and that's how over time, you're going to grow your career and grow the business. So that, to me is. It's been harder to drive than I thought it would be. I thought people immediately would spark to that within a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It's now been two years of talking about that. What's exciting is to see how much people are now embracing it and to see things like our employee engagement scores go up by 20 points over two years versus where they were because people are feeling it and they're motivated by it, and now they're starting to behave the way they need to, to get the outsized result that I know we're capable of. So it's been harder than I thought.
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David Novak
So you're obviously, you're, you're making great progress with the culture to get that kind of engagement that, that you, you definitely would want to have. What's the number one thing you've learned about culture that you're, that you're, you've carried into True Green and, and, or, you know, you, you, you, you've learned it right now right where you're at?
- [29:49]
Kurt Kane
Yeah, I think this idea that I think about my experience in the military and one of the things that I learned really quickly there, and I've recently heard Simon Sinek start talking about this based on exposure to the Marine Corps. But this idea that leaders eat last, and sometimes it's easy to forget that as a leader, your number one job is to support your people and to support your team and set them up for success. And, you know, we're all fortunate. And in roles like this one and many other leadership roles, you get a lot of accolades and, you know, people are interested in your perspective and your opinion and those types of things. But to me, I think, you know, the thing that's most important is making sure that as a leader, you're there to support your team and you're there to help partly hold them accountable, but much more importantly to be able to help set them up for success and get barriers out of the way and champion them. And if you can do that, then it's amazing what people will do to go the extra mile. And I think that's a lesson that I learned a long time ago. I've tried to carry it through my own career, but really here at TruGreen, given the work that we do and the nature of the work we do, I found that it's more important than ever.
- [30:58]
David Novak
So this is your first CEO role. What's something that caught you by surprise? Something you didn't expect, just being the CEO?
- [31:08]
Kurt Kane
Yeah. Well, and this is a true story. The first two weeks I was CEO of the company, I was blown away at the fact that I wasn't getting any internal emails. I actually thought my computer system was broken because all the emails I were getting were from outside parties saying things like, congrats on the new role, really excited for you. You're gonna do amazing things, all those kinds of nice things. But I wasn't getting a lot of internal communication, almost none. And I seriously thought that I had a filter. And it's because people were intimidated to send a note to the CEO of the company. They weren't sure that they would get the response they were looking for. Or there are a million barriers why people hesitate to reach out to you when you're in this role. So what I found is I really had to be wildly proactive in connecting with people and dropping those barriers. And what I like to think about with our culture here at TruGreen, the way I try and lead it is incredibly informal, but very disciplined at the same time. Let's be disciplined about the results. Let's be laser focused on what we need to achieve what's going on in the business. But that doesn't mean we can't have a lot of fun along the way. It doesn't mean we can't laugh a lot along the way. Let's make it fun and energizing to go to work and let's drop the formality of what it means to be in any of these senior leadership positions so that people can really voice their opinion. And we've made a lot of progress on that. So I'm pleased to see. And now my inbox is filled with ideas and suggestions, which is exactly what I would have hoped for.
- [32:37]
David Novak
Kurt, I think one of the things that, you know, really strikes me is that comment about formal, informal, you know, how do you do that? I mean, it sounds nice, you know, let's have fun, and, you know, but still, we're going to be disciplined. We're going to be formal. That sounds really great, but that's not easy to do. I mean, how do you balance those two things?
- [32:59]
Kurt Kane
Yeah, well, I think it's. If you're. If you're constantly building relationships, where you're building them together, where you're talking about the work and you're talking about what needs to happen, I think the reality of what we all get to do every day, that there are a lot of fun things that happen. And I think if you genuinely enjoy people and people know that you enjoy people, then they naturally open up to you. And if you're receptive to that and you give back and you pour into those relationships, then you find that it. I find, anyway, that it comes to life pretty comfortably. And so I think the risk is you become too informal and you're not focused enough on the results or you're not in the business just to be everybody's best friend. But I think at the end of the day, if people really do see that you genuinely care about them, you care about who they are, you care about their families, and you care about their success, people open up very comfortably. And so I think that, to me, has been my experience along the way. And so I think I've been able to balance it and keep it in balance. But at the same point, I think if as long as you're bringing people back to the result that we need to drive and the commitment to those results, I feel like that's a balance that can be achieved pretty comfortably.
- [34:08]
David Novak
And, you know, when you talked earlier, you talked about these five pillars that you had. You know, how did you know not every strategy is created equal? How did you get people focused on what really matters most in terms of driving your growth?
- [34:23]
Kurt Kane
Yeah, well, I think we set out with what's the goal? And if we talk about we're trying to retain customers today and drive new ones in, I think that the beauty of our business is what we're trying to accomplish is actually very simple executing. It takes a tremendous amount of work, and it's hard. But if you say, at the end of the day, how do you measure success? Are we growing customer counts and do we have more customers in our business? Are we successfully delivering financial results? And are our customers more satisfied each year than they were the year before? So I think we were able to simplify it down. And, you know, the five pillars that we landed on were explode customer interest, which is all about driving, differentiation, brand awareness, and what sets us apart. Owning the neighborhood. We have a big neighborhood sales organization in addition to an inside sales organization and call centers. But how do we really drive if we get into a neighborhood? How do we drive our presence all the way through to completion? There's a lot of benefits to doing that with efficiencies, but there's also a competitive idea about owning the neighborhood and taking pride in that. Nothing beats a true green lawn is a strategy that's all about are we executing to the very best level possible? No customer left behind is all about retention. But then the fifth pillar is actually the most important of all those pillars, which is what we call our foundational pillar, which is one team together. And so that is the anchor of everything else we do, which is how do we work together as a team to support each other to deliver the other four. So for me, I was actually really pleased with how quickly those pillars came together and the thinking around those, because I think they were very anchored in the truth of the business. And if you stay focused on the truth of the business, then the strategies come to life pretty quickly.
- [36:07]
David Novak
Speaking of truth, what was the hardest truth you had to tell the organization, and how did people react?
- [36:12]
Kurt Kane
I think the hardest truth at trugreen was we weren't executing as well as we needed to on the lawn, because customer satisfaction tells you everything in our business. And our customers were telling us that they weren't as satisfied as they needed to be, and we weren't delivering as well as we needed to. And we've got a lot of people that work really hard to try and get it right every day, but the perception was that we weren't getting it right often enough. And so I think facing up to that truth, having real conversations internally about what it meant to be able to deliver what our customers really needed us to do, what investments we needed to make back, to be able to make sure that we could deliver for them, I think those are some hard conversations up front to say, can we really deliver what our customers need us to do? But I think by Having those conversations and facing up to that reality, we've been able to move customer perception very, very quickly because at the end of the day, customers were rooting for us to get it right for them. And so they could see the turn in the business, they could see what we were doing. And it's paid off in significant retention growth, it's paid off in overall Google star ratings. All the things that you could look at that you want to see if customers are seeing the difference. But we had to face that truth and have some real hard conversations up front to get there.
- [37:27]
David Novak
How competitive is the category, Kurt, and is there anything that competition is doing that you particularly admire, whether you admit it publicly or not?
- [37:37]
Kurt Kane
Well, it's about as public as it's going to get. So it's a very competitive category. And we're fortunate in the category in our overall size and scale, we're four to five times larger than the next largest competitor. But that said, that's because of our national scale and you have a number of local competitors in every one of our markets. There's not high barriers to entry in our category. So for us, we can have a lot of local competition competitors. So I think for us, what I admire with our local competitors is that they are very good at building relationships with customers. They're very good at focusing in on what makes them unique and different, or at least the driving a perception that they are unique and different because of their local nature. So I do admire that about our competitors. And everybody in this space works really hard to get it right. They genuinely do. I think we have scale advantages that we need to drive harder. But I think underneath that, as I mentioned before, we are as local as anybody out there. And I think building those local connections is incredibly important to be able to reinforce.
- [38:43]
David Novak
And do you have a particular innovation that you're most excited about?
- [38:47]
Kurt Kane
To me, the power of our category is we work with a lot of suppliers that do a number of things. But there's one of our suppliers that's an equipment supplier and they are a ride on equipment provider. And so instead of having to walk every lawn, they've got a great piece of equipment that allows you to be able to go out and actually use this ride on piece of equipment, all kinds of technology, to make sure you get it right in terms of the amount of product you put on every lawn. Because that's one of the biggest risks when you're out doing what we do is you can actually do more damage than good to a lawn if you don't apply the products in the right way. So I love this company called Stinger. It's actually a West Point class of mine that founded the company. We've had a lot of conversations along the way about how we use their equipment in a very advantaged way, both for our customer, but also to uniquely set TruGreen apart for the work that we're doing. So I love the work that's going on with that.
- [39:41]
David Novak
How's AI changing your business?
- [39:43]
Kurt Kane
I'm really excited about AI because for us, we have a large sales organization and we have a lot of data. But for us, selling comes down to really making sure that we're connecting with what the customer needs, but also getting connected with the right customers at the right time. So we're using AI to be able to help bring together a lot of the data platforms that we have to be able to fuel the right conversations with either potential new customers or with existing customers to help get them connected with some of our additional product lines. We've had a lot of work going on within this, within the AI space as a whole, but when I look at the upside from it, it's immense. So I think for us being able to, in my mind, I think the best opportunity is to help every one of our sales leaders think like our very best sales leader does today. How do you help automate the questions that they think through? How do you help them analyze their business? How do you help them get to the right outcomes in terms of the next action step or next follow up? AI can help us a lot with that. And so far I've been really encouraged with the progress that we've been making because of that.
- [40:46]
David Novak
And how are you growing as a leader with AI? What do you do to make sure that you can lead on that front?
- [40:51]
Kurt Kane
Maybe it's embarrassing to say this out loud, but one of the first things I did was I went into, when I first went into ChatGPT and some of the other tools is I typed in how could Kurt Kane be a better CEO for TruGreen? And it was amazing that it was within 30 seconds, spot on with everything that I genuinely needed us to be working on and that I thought I could be doing better. So to have that kind of insight very quickly and I'd encourage anybody listening go in and do that. Think about your business, ask a question just directly about yourself as a leader or your business. It was amazing how fast answers started to come back exactly around that. So I personally use it as a tool to challenge ourselves, challenge accepted beliefs, and really try and gather up as much as we can in terms of insights related to consumer perception, how they feel about our business. AI is a great tool for all of that. So for me, I'm really excited about what it can bring to the table.
- [41:45]
David Novak
Kurt, it's been so much fun catching up, and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this?
- [41:50]
Kurt Kane
I'm ready. Fire away.
- [41:51]
David Novak
The three words that best describe you.
- [41:53]
Kurt Kane
Team oriented, loyal, and passionate.
- [41:56]
David Novak
If you could be the one. If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?
- [42:00]
Kurt Kane
Nate Bargetzi. He's a great comedian based in Nashville. We are. I think he's hilarious and connects with people in some fun ways. I think that'd be a lot of fun.
- [42:09]
David Novak
What's your biggest pet peeve?
- [42:10]
Kurt Kane
Lack of accountability.
- [42:12]
David Novak
Who would play you in a movie?
- [42:13]
Kurt Kane
I'd probably have to go with Tom Hanks on that one.
- [42:16]
David Novak
If you could play center court at any major championship venue in tennis, where
- [42:21]
are you playing and who are you playing against?
- [42:24]
Kurt Kane
Yeah, I would love to have the opportunity to get on the court at Wimbledon against John mcenroe just one time.
- [42:29]
David Novak
Do you play a lot of tennis now?
- [42:31]
Kurt Kane
I've hung in there. I played back in college and have hung in there through the years. And, yeah, it's a lot of fun to get out there and chase the ball around.
- [42:39]
David Novak
What's something you've been curious about lately that has absolutely nothing to do with work?
- [42:44]
Kurt Kane
You know, for me, I've started to get a lot more interested in things like chemistry and the science behind it. My son's a chemistry major now in college, and he's totally different than me on what his interests are. So I've started to fall in love with a lot of his interests to learn more about him.
- [43:00]
David Novak
What's the one thing you do just for you?
- [43:02]
Kurt Kane
One thing I do for me? You asked about tennis. That's really a thing that I get out there, and I love to compete. It's a lot of fun to get out there. I can't play like I used to, but I try to keep up with it as best I can, and it's a lot of fun to do.
- [43:14]
David Novak
So besides your family and friends, what would be your most prized possession?
- [43:18]
Kurt Kane
My most prized possession is actually my late father's watch. He passed away this past year, and we were incredibly close, and he's a big, big part of my life, and so I'd say that's absolutely my most prized possession.
- [43:31]
David Novak
If I turned on the radio in Your car.
- [43:33]
Kurt Kane
What would I hear outside of your podcast? You'd hear a lot of other podcasts, a lot of things like Joe Rogan and others. I just think there's so much to learn that when I used to listen to music in my car, now what I'm listening to all the time is different perspectives from different people.
- [43:48]
David Novak
What's something about you that few people would know?
- [43:50]
Kurt Kane
I think just how much I care about people. I hope people know that. But just how deep and central it is to who I am. I'm incredibly loyal person. I love having great and close relationships with people. Sometimes I think that I might come across as a little intimidating or too serious sometimes. And I like to have a lot of fun, but I really like to build close relationships with people.
- [44:17]
David Novak
What of your daily rituals? Something that you never, ever miss?
- [44:21]
Kurt Kane
I just try and get up, and I think taking physical care of yourself is important. So the first thing I do every day is get up and go work out. Helps you clear my. Helps me clear my head, helps me get focused for the day. So that's a really important part of my. Of my life.
- [44:33]
David Novak
All right, we're out of the lightning round. Great job. You know, you mentioned something, you know, that I thought was, you know, you know, you could be intimidating. Okay. You know, just by the nature of the job, being a CEO, you're intimidating. You know, you know, the person you'd like to be is a comedian. You know, it's like. And you got a sense of humor. How do you. How do you. How do you think about humor and leadership and work?
- [45:00]
Kurt Kane
I think humor is really important, and I have a very dry sense of humor. But I find that humor can help disarm challenging situations. And I'll give you an example, which was when I was leading the Wendy's US Business. I believed that Wendy's should get into the breakfast day part, which it had failed at a number of times. You know, and so I think being able to rally the franchisees around that opportunity, do the work to set the business up for success, to be able to get into that day part, as you know, it's incredibly challenging to expand into new day parts. So doing that, I think humor was a tool to be able to defang a lot of the objections that people had by being able to kind of just get into conversations with people in a different way. And to be able to not make light of past failures, but. Or past challenges, but to be able to recognize that you understand them, but also to be able to say, there's a way to work around them. And so if you could keep conversations light and you could keep people laughing, sometimes they could forget the pain of past failures and open their minds to the possibility of what could come. So I find humor's a really good connector of people, and at the end of the day, it can take serious topics that may be overwhelming and allow you to break them down and not seem so overwhelming after all. So I think humor is a really important part of, I think, a leadership Persona. And it doesn't mean you're always cracking jokes all the time, But I do think if you can keep people laughing or keep people finding the lighter side of a situation, they're more motivated to try and find solutions when things are difficult.
- [46:34]
David Novak
How do you lead at home, Kurt?
- [46:36]
Kurt Kane
Yeah, Well, I think that team together ideas is really important. I think for. For me, it's trying to champion our kids. I've got two great kids. My wife and I have been married since we met. We actually met on the first day of graduate school, and we got married on graduation day. We actually skipped graduation to go to our wedding instead. So we've been very much a team together throughout our entire marriage. And my wife Christine's just absolutely fantastic. She challenges me. She pushes me a lot. But I think for our kids, it's all about supporting them and also challenging them to be the best that they can be. And so we're really fortunate. We've got two kids that are doing really well. We're incredibly proud of them. But it's fun to watch them grow into their own leaders as they go forward down the path and they take on different leadership opportunities as they start their own careers and as my son finishes up college. But for me, it's really about them knowing what I had from my own parents, which is I was loved, I was supported, I was championed, and I was going to be challenged. If I had those things going for me, then I want to give those same things to my kids.
- [47:38]
David Novak
And you said that your wife challenges you and helped you to get to a better decision. Has there ever been something that she's done that's. Or advice she's given you that changed your approach to decision, and if so, tell us the story.
- [47:51]
Kurt Kane
You know, she's a great sounding board, and, you know, I've been fortunate to be able to share a lot of my work experiences with her. And I think years ago, I think one of the things I was excited about at Pizza Hut, we were launching a product they still market today called the Big Dinner Box. And I thought this was going to be the greatest idea in the world, and it's actually proven to stand the test of time. But the way I wanted to launch it was to run it for president. And so there are a lot of things around that idea. We put it into the political campaign back in a time when there was a heated political environment. But as we pushed that out, I wasn't necessarily listening to enough people who said, I don't know that you want to push your brand into the middle of the political debate. It can get kind of heated. And I kept pushing because I thought it was a great idea and we could get a lot of attention. Eventually, it started to go a little bit sideways, and I got a call. They wanted me to be on the Today show to explain why I thought this was a good idea. And as a marketer, I thought, this is a great idea. We'll go on the Today show and we'll talk all about it. And I still remember her counsel saying, that is not going to go well. So whatever you do, do not take that interview. And I think she was exactly right. So I think sometimes you got to listen to your inner voice, and a lot of times she can be my inner voice to be able to keep myself out of trouble sometimes. But at the end of the day, she's been the best champion in the world and has really supported everything that we've been doing together as part of this journey.
- [49:14]
David Novak
What's the most encouraging sign you're seeing right now? True Green. That that tells you that you're waking up to your full potential as a company.
- [49:23]
Kurt Kane
I mentioned those employee engagement scores. To see those move as rapidly as they have tells me that our team is catching fire. And we've got really good financial results. We've got really good business results. I'm pleased to see all that moving in the right direction. And I think that tells you a lot. But underneath it all, when you see employee engagement move as quickly as it has and as meaningfully as it has, that tells me that our best chapter is very much ahead. We've got great people who care a lot. They were looking to be unlocked. They were looking to be empowered. That, to me, is the metric I look at. That tells me that really good days are ahead.
- [50:01]
David Novak
Great. And last question. Here is Kurt. What's one piece of advice you'd want to give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?
- [50:10]
Kurt Kane
One thing, and maybe it's two pieces of advice. One would be believe in yourself. And I think you put yourself in a lot of different positions These leadership roles are hard and they're challenging, and sometimes they can be intimidating. But at the end of the day, believe that you got into the position because of the work that you've done and that you've got the skills to be successful in the role even when you're facing big challenges. The second thing I would say is really embrace that idea of be comfortable being uncomfortable. Recognize you're gonna be doing new things, you're gonna be doing different things, you're gonna be stepping up in some very big ways. So embrace that. Embrace the feeling of what that's all about. And if you do that, then you're gonna make sure that you're on point, you're ready to drive results, and you're gonna do the follow through work required to be successful. So those would be the two big pieces of advice I'd give people.
- [51:03]
David Novak
Well, Kurt, I'm glad you're having fun and you're in this role as CEO and taking TruGreen to the next level. And I wa. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.
- [51:14]
Kurt Kane
Well, I appreciate it. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for the coaching you gave me throughout the years. I can think of a number of one on one coaching sessions where you took me through a three by five card exercise on things I could work on, things I could be better at. And without coaching sessions like that, then I'd be nowhere close to in the role that I'm at today. So thank you for your leadership example and the work you're continuing to do on this podcast and helping everybody be a better leader. It's really impactful.
- [51:45]
Podcast Host
Well, it's clear that Kurt is, you know, a wildly successful CEO. He's worked in a number of different industries and he actually. David worked for you at Yum Brands.
- [51:54]
David Novak
Yeah, he was the. He ran marketing for. For Pizza Hut and did a very good job there. And, you know, one of the things that gives me a lot of joy is just looking around the business business world today and seeing people who used to work at Yum Brands and work with me and they end up being CEOs. And I think my CEO tree is close to 30 executives who are making a difference around the world. And all of them have really taken the approach to people first and recognition. That really makes me feel good because I know they're creating work environments that people want to go to work at and attacking what I think is one of the biggest challenges in business today. And that's the toxic work environment that too many people have to have to endure. So it's great to see Kurt be successful and move on and all the other people that I've had the great privilege to work with and coach.
- [52:52]
Podcast Host
David, it's clear, listening to this episode that Kurt is laser focused on retaining his current customers and he sees that as the biggest growth opportunity at Trust Trugreen. And I'm curious, when you think about acquiring new customers versus retaining your current customers, how do you know when you're focused too much on acquiring those new customers that you forget about retaining the ones that you have?
- [53:14]
David Novak
Well, I think that's the art and science of marketing. But the one thing that I've learned in every category is your existing customers. Particularly heavy user is by far and away the most important segment that you've got to stay focused on. I always called it the 8020 rule. You'd have 20% of your customers count for 80% of your volume. And that's really important for everybody to understand is that there's nothing like having a heavy user. And so many times marketers go into a situation where they think they've really got to grow the business and they think it's all about attracting new users and broadening your reach, when the real fact is you've got a bird in the hand. That bird in the hand is your existing customer. And how do you get them to want to use you more often? The people who really understand that stay focused on what really matters. I remember KFC at one point in time was really trying to get more use users into the business. And that was really hard to do because if people weren't interested in kfc, you know, how are you going to get them all of a sudden to come to kfc? But what we really uncovered was let's take the people who are already like KFC and love it and give them more reasons why they should come. That wasn't like creating a non fried option. It was more about creating more fried things that people love to indulge in. And you know, once we became even more proud of what we make and why we make it and what it provides to our customers, you know, we were able to get our existing customers to come in, come in more often. And that was a lot easier than trying to get somebody to come into KFC that had no real plan to do it.
- [55:06]
Podcast Host
It's so helpful too when you think about how to prioritize different initiatives that you want to pass because it becomes really clear what you need to focus on when you realize that. That the person that you're focusing on is someone who already loves your brand.
- [55:21]
David Novak
And I think if you listen to this podcast and the conversations we have with great marketers, they understand the importance of really focusing on their core user. And when you do that, you can usually grow your business and you get a much higher payout from your marketing dollars and all the operational efforts that you bring to bear to make your customers. Customers happy.
- [55:43]
Podcast Host
Another thing I was really struck by in this conversation with Kurt is his way of boiling down what the strategic pillars are for True Green. And he got their strategic pillars down to five. And they all live on one page in one document, and they tie everything back to that document. They tie meeting agendas back to that document. They tie reports back to that document. And I'm curious, David, hearing that, what would you say to leaders to help them make sure a strategy document like this is actually one that takes root inside the business and doesn't just live on a wall and get ignored?
- [56:18]
David Novak
Well, number one, I think Kurt drives
- [56:21]
home one of the key things you gotta do is you gotta simplify what needs to be done so that everybody can really understand it and that simplification is really key. And then you want to be able to, you know, articulate it in one page or a half a page is even better. It kind of reminds me of so many people get attributed with this quote, but, you know, Abe Lincoln is one, Mark Twain's another. I think it's like, I would have written you a shorter letter if I had time, because what that says is that you gotta take the time to boil down what you wanna say to make the letter shorter. You can ramble on and on and write a long letter, but to really make it concise, that takes effort. So I think, you know, as a leader, whatever you plan on doing, you need to take the time to really articulate it in the simplest, shortest form possible, and then do it with powerful language. You know, I always talk about the importance of breaking through the clutter with your communication. And that takes powerful language, you know, and, you know, it's like one of the things I always talk about there is. I remember the old theme line for Raid, which was, you know, the function of Raid, which is, Raid kills bugs, right? But they didn't just kill bugs. Raid kills bugs dead. You know, adding that one more word really gave a lot more power and memorability to what you're. What you're about to say. You know, I remember one of our strategic pillars was to be obsessed with the customer. So I came up with the notion that we wanted all of our people to be customer maniacs, and everybody needed to be maniacal about understanding what our customers wanted and what they needed, you know, so, you know, saying that we were going to be focused on customer mania, you know, people go, whoa, what? You want me to be a maniac on customers? Yeah, absolutely. Go for it, you know, well, that broke through the clutter, and it communicated one of the things that we wanted to do strategically. So, yeah, it's very, very important to really articulate what you want to do very simply. And then, you know that old saying, communicate, communicate, communicate. Come back to it, come back to it, come back to it. Don't get bored, you know, with what your message is. Just keep driving home that message. And, you know, I think that's what leaders do, and that's how you make things come alive. If it just gets laminated and put up in the wall and you don't go back to it, you're just wasting your time. So you got to drive it deep. And in every meeting that you have, every forum that you have, you know, you just keep reinforcing it in everything you do. If you've got an internal communication that you do, you reinforce it. You tie it back to what you're really trying to get done and why. And I think that always works.
- [59:15]
Podcast Host
David, we mentioned before, and you heard it in the episode, about all the different industries that Curt has worked in. And I loved when you two talk about the skills that really transfer across industries. Kurt says, you know, skills like being able to simplify the business down to what matters most is a skill that every great leader should have and one that is really valuable, regardless of what industry you're working within. For someone listening, David, who might. Might be thinking about making a jump into a different industry, what do you really think they should be focused on and what skills should they be developing?
- [59:47]
David Novak
Well, that's interesting because, you know, I mentioned earlier when you asked me right after the interview with Kurt about him working for me, you know, I've had a lot of people work for me, go on and run different businesses. Well, how do they go to these different categories? Well, they go to these different categories with the customer orientation. Like Brian Nichol, you know, one of the top CEOs in the country today, he went to Chipotle, turned around Chipotle, and really did a great job. Then he went to Starbucks and, you know, and he worked for me. And when he worked for me, one of the things that made him Such a great CEO at Taco Bell is he was so customer focused. He never lost that. You have to understand what your customers want if you're going to be successful in any business. And that's the transferable skill, skill that everyone has to have if you're really going to be successful. You got to be able to really take your organization, understand what the customer wants, and then drive home the initiatives that will make your customer happy. So it's an incredible combination of just being customer focused and then being able to execute and drive home what really needs to get done. But I think those are, you know, two transferable skills that everybody has to have. And when I look at the people that I've developed who've gone on into different categories and been extremely successful, you know, they have that capability, and that's why they've been so such winners wherever they've been.
- [61:16]
Podcast Host
One thing I've also noticed, David, about folks that have come up at Yum Brands, I think about Kevin Hockman, who's the CEO of Brinker, which is the parent company of Chili's and Maggianos. And I love following Kevin Hockman on LinkedIn because every day he's posting, celebrating his employees and how great of a job they're doing. And so I also think, you know, that customer mania piece is clearly of utmost importance. It's also that skill of creating a culture where everyone counts that I feel like the CEOs who came up at Yum Brands have done at their companies and. And something that's allowing them to experience a lot of success. Kevin Hoffman is just, he's a great marketer, and I think he came up at marketing e on brands. But he's running Brinker now, and Chili's just having a moment. And I can see why people love working with Kevin because he celebrates the heck out of all the folks that work for him.
- [62:09]
David Novak
Yeah. And let's take another guy who's an incredible leader. Let's take Andy Jassy, who we had a conversation with. He's the CEO of Amazon. If you haven't read it, you gotta read it. You gotta read Andy's annual letter. And he talks about the culture that they have to have to be able to embrace change and keep driving new initiatives. And he talks about their strategic pillars that are just so incredible. But here's a guy who understands the importance of simplifying, even mentioned. And I love this is the. One of his favorite bands is the Beths. Okay. And they have a song about how things are not always in a straight line and that you gotta be able to adjust the things when the line changes. You know, he does a great job of using that as a theme for his annual report. A great example of what I'm talking about. You know, he makes his point in a way that you remember it, and he breaks through the clutter with his communication, and I think that's very important. But I can't believe I didn't say that. You gotta build a culture where everyone counts because that's job number one. And I didn't discover that myself, you know, by, you know, that's not my idea.
- [63:23]
I learned that by studying all the
- [63:24]
great companies, and all the great companies do create a culture where everyone counts and they recognize their people and their people feel valued. So that's a transferable skill that any leader can take into any business. So thanks for bringing that up, Kula.
- [63:37]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. Well, David, after this conversation, I am inspired to do a much better job at taking care of my yard because it looks very sad right now, but hopefully my neighborhood is a true green neighborhood very soon, and I will get all the people using true green.
- [63:53]
David Novak
Yeah. And, you know, I think while you're
- [63:55]
taking care of your yard, I think
- [63:57]
all of our listeners can remember the importance of staying focused on their core customer and making sure that they're driving frequency and retaining them and making sure that you communicate your strategy as simply as possible and go back to it time and time again.
- [64:12]
And then know that if you want
- [64:15]
to move across businesses, whatever, you got
- [64:18]
to create that culture where everyone counts.
- [64:20]
And your team members need to want to come to work. And you have to be able to understand your customers really well and then be able to drive the execution that will make sure that your strategies come to life. And I think those are all points that were well made in this conversation. Conversation with Kurt.
- [64:38]
Podcast Host
Well, thank you again, Kurt, for an excellent episode of How Leaders Lead. And thank you, David. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead. We will see you next Thursday.