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At 20 years old and looking for a career, Trevor Kimmell found himself joining his first Weed Man operation in Stillwater, Okla., back in 2010.
“That thing kind of turned into way more than I ever thought it would,” Kimmell says about the experience, remembering that it was mostly a two-man operation between just himself and the owner. “He had me managing the truck, routing the day, contacting customers, doing lawn analysis. It was pretty much me. He pretty much guided me and taught me everything I know to this day. He gave me a great foundation.”
Kimmell was holding down the fort almost all on his own, and when a new partner joined for the Oklahoma City branch, Kimmell sprayed for them too. But with that kind of workload, life started to get in the way.
“I started to date my (now) wife, and we ended up getting engaged,” Kimmell says. “And Weed Man actually operated out of our rental house.”
So after a few more years, Kimmell and his wife moved back home to Pond Creek, Okla., (with its population of less than 1,000). Kimmell says he got his own spray license and tank and just “did it on my own” while working at a natural gas company as his new main gig.
“It’s something that I’ve done ever since,” he says. “I always serviced yards. I would use vacation to go service yards, work on the weekends servicing yards.”
A new chapter
In 2018, Kimmell changed things up again and became a volunteer firefighter, and it immediately changed his life after one of his first calls to action.
“A really good friend of mine’s dad had a stroke,” he says. “And it was just very humbling because I was there to help not only my friend’s dad who I had known forever in small town America. So, being there to get him to the hospital and be there for my friend, I immediately thought, ‘How can I get into this? How can I be a career fireman just to be there for people?’”
He ended up getting into EMT classes to become a career fireman, and after three years of working through those, he was able to “get away from the average job” and officially join the fire team, all while still servicing yards through his own company, raising his kids and taking care of his family.
Kimmell says it went from being a way to make some extra cash to an avenue for building relationships. And like his experience in the lawn care business, he says the fire department helps him feel closer to the community and the people in it.
“I love meeting people. I love building trust, building community. I love that aspect of it,” he says. “I love the community part. I guess that’s why I love helping people, because you just never know what someone is going through to be helping them.”
Despite the fire department giving Kimmell a newfound sense of fulfillment, he knew there was still room to grow his capabilities, particularly on the lawn care side. In his business, Kimmell Weed Control, he says, “everything was on a piece of paper,” and he needed organizational help to take things to the next level.
He always had Weed Man in the back of his mind, and in July 2024, more than a decade after his original stint in Oklahoma City, he reached out to his original franchise coordinator and others with the company to ask about the possibility of getting a location next to his hometown in Enid, Okla.
“They built a territory real quick and presented it to me,” he says. “I just kept going and thought I would see it through unless a door just shut on me. And sure enough, here I am with a Weed Man in Enid, and we seem to be growing pretty quick.”
The franchise life
Getting started with his own Weed Man franchise was a bit easier for Kimmell than most since he’d had experience with the company before, but his rapid growth came from a strong reputation for both the company and his own name, something he says he’s trying to appreciate rather than get overwhelmed by the quick success.
“It’s really gained a lot of interest, having something new here in Enid for people to choose from,” he says. “They’ve known me for a long time, and they know my name is behind the franchise, and I think that helps a whole lot because I’ve never advertised — it’s all my customers that I’ve had in the past through word of mouth.”
And Weed Man has helped him grow in the ways he’d hoped, validating his decision to engage with the franchise model. Besides getting organized, Kimmell says he sometimes struggled with bigger business decisions like budgeting, when to buy a truck or when to hire extra help.
Now, he’s able to find guidance with Weed Man’s proven system to scale, and one of the biggest benefits he’s found is being able to take advantage of Weed Man’s software solutions.
“They’ve already failed. They’ve already done the hard stuff. They’ve already done everything where it’s a proven system to scale, grow, provide jobs — which is one thing I really want to do, is provide job opportunities for people,” Kimmell says. “They have a good product that I am excited to talk about.”
Kimmell says he’s good at pushing himself, and he does it a lot through lawn care and firefighting, but it’s also nice to have the franchise push him too, this time with some extra direction and structure in mind.
And when Kimmell was starting out with Weed Man, he was worried that his existing customers from his time as Kimmell Weed Control wouldn’t follow him through the transition. But thanks to that strong foundation he got all those years ago during his first stint with the company (the friendly neighborhood fireman reputation doesn’t hurt), he’s found that not only did they want to stick with him, but now he’s able to offer his customers bigger and better services that wouldn’t have been possible on his own.
“It’s not a conversation that you have with people all the time; ‘How do you feel about me?’ That’s what’s probably been even crazier is how supportive every one of my customers were that signed up for more stuff than they normally do,” Kimmell says. “That’s been pretty awesome to see the support that people have given.”
