Kurt Kane, CEO of TrueGreen

This episode of CEOs You Should Know features Kurt Kane, CEO of TrueGreen.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I heard Gain president CEO True Green, you've been there

(00:04):
about two years now, right, that's right, just under two okay,
fifteen thousand or so employees.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
At our peak in the summer season, when we're going
full boar with everybody out on the lawns and taking
care of everybody across the country, it's about fifteen thousand people.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Okay, maybe a little over again, this is what my
research little over two million customers.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, two point three million as of last count.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Okay, so needless to say, just a massive, massive operation.
So what surprised you the most in the last couple
of years.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, you know, I think when I came into it,
I was coming into the lawn care industry from a
different industry. I'd spent most of my career about twenty
five years of it in food and beverage, from package
goods into restaurants, and I spent the last fifteen in
restaurants specifically, so I didn't know what to expect with
everything coming into the lawn care industry. But I think

(00:51):
the thing that probably surprised me the most was just
how professional everybody was, how much they cared about the
customers and getting it right for everybody. Because it's a
very high touch business, and the amount of pride that
people put into their lawns and the amount that they
care about their homes really comes through. So it's a
much more emotional business than I would have expected, much

(01:12):
more so than food and beverage, which is already emotional
because people really care about what they eat. The amount
of passion people have for how their home represents in
their own neighborhood and how it looks as a whole
was really surprising at me.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Oh that's interesting because I heard you in another interview
talk about coming from food and beverage and talking about
there was a trust between the brand and the consumer,
especially with food because as you said, they're eating the
product right right, there needs to be a level of
trust there. And it put you firmly in the people business.
And basically, want to hear you're saying, I was going

(01:47):
to ask you if you still if you still feel
here in the people business now that it's lawn care,
and it sounds like you are.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah, Well, I think it's a great point.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I think it really is the people business, and it's
it's on all sides of it, and I think every
business can describe itself as a people business, because really,
you know, the companies and businesses are only as good
as the people that they have doing what they do.
But this is a very high touch people business, and
you know, we've got teams of people getting up early
every morning to be able to get out, get out

(02:15):
in the neighborhoods, get out into communities, make connections. So
there's that side of it. But then from the customer side, again,
it's a very emotional personal investment.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
People.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, their biggest investment in most cases is their
home and so they really care about it. And you know,
when you bring those two things together, you end up
with a very people oriented business. And when we get
it right, it's because we build connections with our customers
and we really have good relationships with them. If we
get it wrong, it's always a people issue. It means
we didn't connect with that customer, we didn't help educate them,

(02:47):
we didn't talk with them about what.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
We were trying to do or where we were.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
But when we really break it down, if we connect
well with people, we do great. If we don't connect
well with people, then we run into issues. So I
think that really just underscores how much of a people business.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
It really is underd percent. And I had heard I
had read on day two of the job, you went
on right along right, you joined a specialist. You went
out and you saw what goes on in the field.
And I have to think you probably learned more doing
that than anything of spreadsheet could tell you.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, for sure, it was my second day, and it
was it would have been my first day if I
could have gotten over there in time, but have my
first day was actually getting announced at a board meeting
in New York. And then we got on the airplane
and got down to one of our supports center locations,
which is in Memphis, Tennessee. Had the opportunity to get
out the second day with one of our specialists.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
His name is James, and we had a great day.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
And I thought it was really important to have my
boots on the lawn very very early on, so that
everybody in our company could see how I understand, that's
where really the rubber meets the road for us. It's
how we do on the lawn every day. And I
asked James, you know, what is it you like about
your job? And got to talk with him a lot,
But the first thing he told me he liked about
his job was that he got to spend his day

(04:00):
on his own.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
He didn't have.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
To talk with a lot of people, and you know,
he could just focus on what he was doing and
what was going on with his customers. And I said, well,
bad news, James, I got lots of questions for you.
I'm stuck in your truck with you, so I hope
you can survive it.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
James is like, how do I get out of this?
I got to ride with this guy all day.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
I'm sure he did. But he's really talented.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
He's been with us for over twenty years, and you know,
he really loves what he does, and so we actually
have a lot of people go see James because he
really educates you. And he was super intentional about what
he wanted to share with me, and you know, he
kind of doled it out through the day and let
me go out and see what he does every day
as well. But I think spending time, you know, in
the field, getting out there to our branch location, seeing

(04:39):
what's happening on the ground is really really important because
that's where you know, the truth of the business really lives.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
All the time.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
You you had mentioned earlier about your past experience in
food and beverage and your resumes insanely impressive by the
I mean your time with Mulson and Young and Pizza Hut,
Wendy's all of it. It. So you have all that
marketing experience, high level marketing right, global CMO president, and
then you come to true being where your CEO and

(05:09):
you're in charge of everything. Do you still keep a
close eye on marketing? Is it hard to let it
go since you have it it's like in your bones.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, Well, we have a terrific Chief marketing officer, Alyssa Phuquets,
and so she's more than capable of handling it. That said,
you know, she and I talk a lot, and it's
because it's fun and and you think about a career
in marketing. You know, my original career goal was one
day to make it to being a brand manager, you know,
and you know see what that was all about. And

(05:37):
before I've been fortunate to be able to progress beyond
the brand manager role and take on some of these
larger roles. But you know, brand brand marketing is and
brand management is about so much more than just the
communication side or just the advertising side of it. It's
about really being clear about what your brand or your
business stands for. People talk about brand positioning, it's really

(05:59):
company positioning.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Who are you, what do you do? What do you
stand for?

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Can you communicate that all the way through the organization
so that everybody buys into it and feels like you're
actually accurately representing what the company is all about. And
I found that to be the case at Wendy's. I
found that to be the case at Pizza Hut. I'm
clearly finding that to be the case at True Green,
where when you really get to the core of it,
and you understand who you are as a company and

(06:24):
how you represent yourself as a brand, then everything you
do is really reinforcing the marketing idea. But it's it's
a lot more than you know what. I hate to
say the phrase just marketing, because marketing is incredibly involved
and there's a lot a lot to it, But the
aspect of it is I think it's it's bigger than

(06:45):
a marketing idea. I think it's a it's a corporate idea.
I think it's an identity idea. And if you get
if you get into that and you fall in love
with doing that, then you can see some really remarkable results.
And that's where we are on the journey with True Green. Yeah,
I bother a less, probably more than she'd like, because
she happens to work in a world that I'm very
familiar with and all to.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Talk about, so we have some problem with that.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
But I also try to make sure that she's got
all the room she needs, because she's incredibly talented and
has all all the all the ability that we need
her to have to be able to do her job
without me being the CMO.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Okay, but you're still going to be in there every
once in a while.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Every now and then.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
He office.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Her office is next to mine, so she did draw
the short.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
She's got proximity problems, let's be honest. So along the
lines of corporate identity, it sounds to me like you're
deeply invested in storytelling. I mean, it's probably a big
part of your background. You know. How do you see
that in terms of shaping the story for True Green
for the next week, month, ten years.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, I think I think story is at the heart
of every good brand, And if you get to any
any brand and really understand it, they have great storytelling
but it's because they usually embrace some kind of conflict,
because every good story has conflict.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
At the center of it.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
There has to be tension, and if you think about it,
you know, there's there's a lot of different things that
you could focus on. But years ago I got introduced
to a great company called Character LLC. And they it's
a company founded by former illustrators and they are experts
at storytelling and they cut their teeth working on things

(08:17):
like Tony the Tiger and trying to represent him Chester Cheetah.
They did work for other things like that, and so
they've they've worked on amazing things. But going all the
way back to my time on Pizza Hut spent time
with them to try and get to the core of
the story, to really understand, you know, what that brand
was about, what was the tension, what was it jousting

(08:37):
against carried that through to Wendy's, you know, and at Wendy's,
our whole thing was about kind of this idea of
right versus charming. We always wanted to be right, but
we always wanted to be likable as well, and when
we embraced that and embraced that tension, it really fueled
our story, so we went out and picked big fights
with McDonald's all the time. Yeah, I was fortunate during

(08:59):
my time there. I was there for almost nine years,
and we had growth every year. Thirty five of my
thirty seven quarters there, we were positive on same restaurant sales.
And I really attribute the vast majority of that to
the fact that we got our story right.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
We were clear about what we stood for.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
We were the antidote to what we viewed as subpar
fast food experiences, and we really had our customers backs
and we told that story and some really big forums.
So true Green, we're trying to do the same thing,
which is, you know, really get clear about how we
make it easy and affordable to have a great looking lawn.
But we encapsulated with the phrase internally, which is trust

(09:39):
the pros, the pros trust, and so if you think
about that, you know it's you know, we have partnerships
with the PGA Tour, we have partnerships with minor league baseball.
We take care of some amazing properties like you know,
Daytona Motor Speedway, Michigan Speedway. We take care of all
kinds of national parks. We take care of the Biltmore Estate,
so you look at really so it's amazing when you

(10:01):
think about these relationships that we have. And so what
we've tried to do is help people understand that they're
making a good choice when they choose True Green, because
we're the pros that have their back. And the reason
they can believe that is because the pros who know
best are choosing us to have their back. So that
is really the story that we're out there trying to

(10:21):
communicate overtly, and so far it's really proven powerful since
we landed on that.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Got it. Yeah. One of the questions I was going
to ask you later, I feel like you just answered it,
was what do you say to all the DII wires
out there who just aren't ready to give it up yet,
they're not ready to let the pros come in and
take over. But I guess you kind of. Here's here's
here's the things we take care of. Yeah, we can
handle your lune well.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
And a lot of it too is we also say, look,
look you do you let us do your lawn care?
Because you know, there's things that people love about handling
their own lawn, and in particular a lot of people
love to cut their own grass. They find it very satisfying.
It's a defined task. They're proud of it. What we
do is actually help create the health the lawn and
the healthy environment so that you can actually like the

(11:03):
output after you do that as a do it yourself
or if you choose to do that. And so for us,
it's really about look, think about how you're spending your time.
Think about, you know, how valuable your time is, and
the choices that you have, particularly on the weekends, because
a lot of people handle their lawn care work.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
You know on the weekends. Do you want to be
able to.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Go to your kid's birthday party or you know, or
spend time with them on the weekend, take them off
to go do something, or do you want to be
out on your lawn. And for us, you know, we
love being on your lawn. And we've got professionals. We've
got numerous PhDs that specialize in the law care needs
of all the different regions that we're in. Because we're
a fully national company, we've got almost over three hundred

(11:42):
branch locations, and we.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Have local specialists to help you.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
So take advantage of all that local knowledge and capability,
and then you can go in and complete the task.
If you want to cut your grass, knock your socks off,
go do it. It's going to look great, and we're
going to make sure that it's healthy and ready for
you to do that.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right, But otherwise, go go go live your life. This
part of it.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, we've got this.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
We're built to do this, and we don't want you
to have to manage chemicals. We don't want you to
have to store items. We don't have to take you.
There's a lot that we do to do what we do.
We're just a better position to do it and we
love doing it. So again, you can use your free
time for a lot of different things. If you let
us take this off your plate.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
That sounds like a pretty good arrangement. All right, let's
pivot a little bit. Let's go to your background. Sure
you don't mind so, of course, Now, you grew up
in a suburb south of Chicago, Lost Moore. You consider
yourself a Chicago guy.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, you know, I've moved a lot since then, but
I spent the first sixteen years of my life in Chicago,
and I was there during a peak opportunity when when
the Bears won the eighty five Super Bowl. That's a
kind of imprinting experience. Sure, So yeah, I have a
huge love for for Chicago. My son's actually at school
there right now in the universe, at the University of Chicago,
because we love the city so much. So I'm fortunate

(12:53):
to get back there a lot. I did move to Houston,
Texas halfway through high school and have spent a lot
of time Inis since then, so I kind of became
an adopted Texan. Okay, you know, because of all the
time I've spent there. But I've also lived in Cincinnati,
I've lived in Columbus, I've lived in Denver. I've lived
a lot of different places, and so it's given me

(13:13):
an opportunity to see a lot of the country. But
underneath it all, if you asked me, am I still
a Chicago guy and his deep dish pizza the only
kind of pizza, the answer is yes.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
So it is baseball season, Cubs or Socks.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I gotta know, Well, I'm from the South Side, so
I'm a Socks fan, even though that's been a little
bit painful or a lot painful of late. But but yeah,
we're hoping they pull it together.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Okay, that's gonna be a while, but we'll see, all right,
good to know.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
I know.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
So, so you played D one tennis four years at
West Point, right yep, after that military service, right. I
unbelievable experiences, and I am curious just how did shape you,
not just as a person, but how did it shape
you professionally? Like how did those experiences being at West Point,

(13:57):
playing competitive tennis, being in the military create the President's
CEO that I'm talking to.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Today, Well, I appreciate the question, and I think it's
I think they they built together together, they were they
were additive.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
I think as a whole.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
You know, west Point obviously, you know famous for it's
it's leadership development, and you know what goes on there,
But when you show up, you're just an eighteen year
old kid and you don't know what you're stepping into
and you don't know what to expect, and you don't
know where it's going to lead, you know. But to me,
I was really fortunate to be surrounded by just amazing people.

(14:31):
And everybody you meet is more accomplished than the last.
But I think the thing that I love about West
Point so much and the experience that I had there
is nobody is full of themselves. There. You know, west
Point attracts a kind of individual and a kind of
leader that may be really accomplished and really talented, but

(14:51):
they're also really humble and grounded. And that's the kind
of leaders that the army needs, and that's what west
Point really tries to embed an everybody. There's a great
phrase that I think people haven't in their mind. It's
really reinforced very quickly, which is leaders eat last. And
the whole mindset is your job is to take care of.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Your troops first.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
And if you think that way all the time, and
it is embodied if you go to any military facility
and you know, any army post, anywhere you go into
the field, you're going to see the troops being taken
care of first. And that's a really important lesson that
west Point instills in you very very quickly. So I
think that's probably the most important lesson I think anybody
that he can have. For me, playing you know, tennis

(15:36):
for Army was a dream come true. I was a
pretty good high school tennis player. I wasn't like a
top recruit for Army. Actually, I was the last recruit
that came in in my class recruited.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Nonetheless, recruited none the less, but.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
That means I got to play. Everybody was trying to
walk on the team and always had to battle for
my spot.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
And so we singles, doubles both, I played both, play both.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
But but for me, it just it taught me a
lot about grit and heart. And again, if you don't
have all the talent in the world, then you have
to dig in. And so I was usually pretty good
about finding ways to win even if I wasn't the
best guy on the court.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
So I loved it.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Gave me the chance to travel around I'm really all
the Northeast, compete against some great schools.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
And uh and and learn a lot from it.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
But I think the most important part it taught me
was even if you don't have all all the talent,
if you put in the work, you put in the effort,
and you have the heart, then you can still come
out on top. And so you know, I carried that
into my military service. I've carried that into my professional career,
and you know, I think it's really really paid off.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
At what point will you be writing a book? It
sounds like there's a book in there.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
No, I guess there, I guess there could be if
anybody would want to read it is probably a bigger question.
But I think the best thing I could talk about
in the book is all the leaders I've learned from
and the experiences I've had along the way because I've
been fortunate, I've really you know, I lucked into some
great leaders initially, and then I've really sought out the
opportunity to work for great leaders since then. And those

(17:05):
are really the lessons that stick with you. So maybe
that would make a great book someday.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Probably mean your experience alone. So I heard you in
an interview. You said there's two kinds of people in
the world, those who complicate and those who simplify. Are
you striking as someone who seemingly on the simplify side
of the ledger? I guess with fifteen thousand employees, you
have to find ways to simplify when possible. But how
do you apply that to your day to day?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, well, I think you know, to me, it's and
we all go through our lives meeting a lot of
different people, and you know, when when I as I
share that there's two kinds of people, and I think
what you find is there's some people who try and
make sure you know how smart they are all the
time by making things seem hard or making their knowledge
seem hard earned love right, you know, And that's you
know that can you know, be an interesting, you know,

(17:50):
kind of group of people to engage with the people
that that I really tend to appreciate. And maybe it
goes back to you know, those people I described at
West Point was everybody had enough going for them. They
didn't feel the need to try and tell you how
spectacular they were, how smart they were, how whatever. It
was the opposite of that. Everybody was always you know,
poking fun at each other, kind of bringing each other down.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
They weren't driven by insecurity.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, and so I think that aspect of people are
really simplify, I think is a unique it's a unique
talent for people to be able to take something that's
very complicated, and most businesses are super complicated when you
really get down to it. There's a lot going on
to accomplish what almost any business does every day. But
if they can simplify it and bring it down to
the core of what makes that business special and you know,

(18:34):
really reinforce that with people, then I think that's a
really powerful thing and almost every brand or business that
I've seen it does well. Does that You're crystal clear
about who they are, what their mission is, and they're
relentless about making sure everybody that joins that organization knows
that too. So I think you know, it's it's really
being if you're somebody who is a simplifier of the complicated,

(18:58):
that's really really powerful and I've seen people do amazing
things when they do that.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
So to that point, and I only have a couple
more questions for you. Can you talk about one team
together your company culture and how how would you how
would you describe that to an employee on their first day.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, well, when we when we got it, When I
first came into my role, I spent a lot of
time in the field, went all of our different operating regions,
had the opportunity to talk to people, and one of
the things that I heard was we were we were
we were too siloed in the way we were going
about our work. Our sales teams and our marketing teams
felt removed from what was happening with our field, production

(19:37):
and operations team. Historically those had been very close, but
that you know, over the past several years, decisions had
been made that really tried to drive them apart so
they could focus more on their functional area of excellence
rather than trying to drive collaboration. And so as I
kept talking to people, what I heard was how much

(19:57):
people missed the collaboration, how much they missed the connection
because of a lot of a lot of the good
in the business was actually in the gray area between
the functions rather than I'm a salesperson or I'm a
lawn tech. It was, Okay, how do we work together
to be able to have these these things? Really, you know,
you have the synergy that they deserve.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Breaking down breaking down the barriers, and.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
So people they felt like they had to go around
our systems to try and work together, rather than the
system enabling them working together. And that's where we came
with with one Team Together as our cultural pillar. It's like, look,
we're going to succeed together. Our incentive structures are going
to align around us succeeding together, and we're going to

(20:41):
encourage you to work together, and we really mean it.
So understand that you're empowered, Understand that locally you have
the opportunity to make decisions. And at the same point,
understand that it's the expectation that not only are we
working together, but that internally we have each other's backs
to be able to support, you know, the kind of
outcomes that we need together. So we talk a lot

(21:02):
about one team together. It's a phrase I use a
lot of my personal life, team together when I talk
about my family, when I talk about my kids, you know.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
And so we.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Landed on it pretty quickly, but I think our organization
really needed to hear it, and most importantly, we needed
to live it. And they've seen it, I think, and
we've seen it in our employee engagement scores, you know,
over the past two years since we really started talking
about that idea, we've seen people and across our company
become more engaged significantly so and we've seen the brand

(21:34):
get healthier as we've been executing around that idea as well.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
So it's really powerful.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
That's one thing to It's one thing to say it,
you know, it's another thing to actually activate and if
it's resonating and clearly something, something's working. So we're here,
we're recording in Nashville, right, HQ is here correct.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
We call it our support center, but yes, we have
two support centers ones here in Nashville, and our other
support center is an in Memphis, but our Nashville Supports
Center is new.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
We opened it in January of this year. So, okay,
first year here in Nashville.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay, if there was something you wanted to tell people
in Nashville about your place here in the community, what
would that be?

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Well, I think you know, we're here in Nashville for
a lot of reasons, and I think you know the
the investments that people here in the leadership and the
broader city government have made and across the state to
have us here in Middle Tennessee to start out with. Again,
we've had a great presence in Memphis for for many years.
We had the option and the need to be able

(22:33):
to have a support center that had better accessibility through
an airport that went some more places, and so you know,
Nashville was one of the options we were considering for it.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Well, we also considered other cities.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
But what we found was that the city leaders here
have a real vision for what they're trying to get accomplished.
We knew it was a great place to be able
to attract really good talent. So there was a lot
that we liked about, you know, that aspect of Nashville,
And the biggest thing I think the people of Nashville
should know is we want to be a big and
meaningful part of the community. I'm personally excited about what

(23:09):
Nashville represents. I'm a big country music fan. Love to
see that, really love songwriters and songwriting and Nashville. As
we talked about storytelling, Nashville is all about storytelling, absolutely,
so I think it's a great environment for us to
do what we want to do. I also want the
people in Nashville to know, Look, we're we're really good
at what we do. We're here to help you with

(23:29):
your long care needs at the same time, but you know,
the biggest thing is we want to be part of
this community. We're investing in the community in a lot
of ways with local community initiatives. You're going to see us,
You'll see our branding on the dugout at the you know,
at the at the minor league baseball stadium here, you know,
and being able to you know, be a big part

(23:49):
of that is part of our our investment.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
In the community.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
But we're excited about being here and we've got a
brand new office in Franklin. People have been really enjoying
working there and so far we're off to a great start.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
That's great, that's great, We're about wrapped up. Here's anything
that I didn't cover that you wanted to touch on?

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, I think you know the aspect of you know,
what does it mean to be a brand storyteller and
how do you carry that into the CEO role because
a lot of people ask questions about a marketer that
steps into a CEO role and what's that transition like, Yeah,
And I would say for me personally, it's it's been
really natural. And when I look at a lot of

(24:30):
the great CEOs that I look at and respect and admire,
a lot of them come out of a out of
a brand management background. So I think there's a lot
of lessons to learn there. But I also think it's
important to know what you don't know and you know
how you can rely on others. We've got a fantastic
CFO and our company's name has been done. I'm a
terrific leader, a great partner or Head of production and Operations,

(24:53):
Bill Housbeck is amazing. He's been with True Green for
for over forty years, and so you know, those are
areas that I didn't have as much depth of experience with,
but being able to get into those relationships. And Ben
and I actually used to work together at Pizza Hut
years ago, so I knew Ben before I came here.
But I think as a CEO, a lot of times
people think you have all the answers. What I would

(25:15):
encourage people, I don't care what level of leadership you're in,
don't stop asking questions because very rarely do you have
all the answers. And if you acknowledge that and know
that on the way in and have humility around it,
you're going to get to a lot better outcome. So
that'd be probably my biggest tip for anybody on leadership.
I think it's really important to know that.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
So go into every day wanting to learn something new,
but also surround yourself with really good and really smart people.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
I think it's incredibly important. And if the people who
are on your team are more talented than you, some
people get defensive about that, I will tell you that's
the greatest gift you can ever have.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
And then your job as a leader is to be
able to help.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Encourage them, set them up for success, help them grow
their careers and have good things happen for them.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Well, this right back to what you were saying about
being at West Point. Don't be full of yourself. Yeah,
no reason to be insecure, right, everyone around you doing
great things. It's good for everybody.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Well, and you've shared some nice things about my career
journey and the journey I've been on. If you ask me,
the thing I'm most proud of in my career, outside
of having some good results on some great brands that
I really love and care a lot about, the thing
I'm most proud of is I've had over twenty people
that have worked for me at one point in my
career that have either become CMOS presidents or CEOs, and

(26:33):
so if I was a small part of their leadership
development journey along the way, that feels really good. But
what it reinforces again is get great people on your
team and set them up to be able to flourish
and they will go do amazing things. And then champion
them every step of the way along their journey and
have helped great things happen in their career in whatever

(26:55):
way you can. It's amazing to see how much that
pays off.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
That's great. You're just creating this tyre ecosystem of really great,
talented people out doing good things. Amazing. So, Kurt Kane,
president CEO of True Green, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Me too,