To Infinity… and BEYOND!

Spray Foam Magazine – Show 2026 – It’s with tremendous honor that Spray Foam Magazine presents 2025’s Contractor of the Year (COTY) award to Curt Janzen and Kevin Boschee of Beyond Group, from Alberta, Canada. Last year, SFM awarded this dynamic duo the Outstanding Growth & Excellence Award, and we’re beyond excited to see that they’ve continuously embodied those adjectives to the absolute fullest extent.

Brothers-in-law Curt Janzen (CEO) and Kevin Boschee (CFO) are the leaders behind Beyond Group, a multi-division insulation conglomerate formerly known as Beyond Foam Insulation. The company’s name, past and present, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It marks a company-wide overhaul and conveys the vision they want to create for their customers, employees, and for themselves. Over the last several years, they’ve been striving to go “beyond foam” without leaving it behind and have achieved exactly that.

Insulation. Thermal. Lifting. Roofing. Coatings. These five divisions encompass their company’s expertise and are held together by one common through-line: the ubiquity of spray foam and a company culture committed to excellence.

Facing the Cold, Hard Truth

These two have spent the last 18 years refining their products and service offerings to give their clients the utmost bang for their hard-earned bucks. They’ve always played the game by the book– hiring folks with experience, crunching the numbers every quarter, adhering to industry standards, and collecting industry certs (Baeumler Approvals and COR Safety Certifications, to name-drop a couple). However, at times, it felt like they were running in place in spite of their best efforts. They began to ask themselves what was missing, and found the answer in their name. Look beyond. Beyond foam, beyond the daily grind. What was the most important ingredient in their company’s success? It was the people. Their relationships. Their culture. Answering that question flipped on a million-lumen lightbulb, and now, they’ve got their sights trained on helping the rest of the industry go beyond and grow together.

People are the Point

Curt and Kevin might be the founders and de-facto leaders of Beyond Group, but if you asked them, they’d probably say they don’t “run” anything. Rather than commanding with an iron fist by the tenets of a golden pocketbook, their approach to leadership is informed by the needs of their employees. In the trades, this approach is unconventional, to say the least. Or, as Curt describes it, even “hippie-dippy.” The party line in trade work has long been “Shut up and get tough, or get out.” Most business owners in the trades aren’t worried about their employees’ perceptions or feelings, but about the bottom line. The average owner-operator is concerned with winning bids and pulling a profit. And that mindset does work, for a while. But at a certain point, you reach a plateau and can’t scale the mountain anymore.

What good is it to have a team of skilled employees that hate their jobs so much they’re constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to jump ship? Throwing money at the problem through raises and bonuses only goes so far. 

The truth is, any employee who resents their job, no matter how highly paid, is never going to go above and beyond to help the company succeed. They’ll cover their own bases, and that’s it.

The hard truth is this: when the relationships suffer, the business looks less like an empire and more like a house of cards. For small businesses, marketing budgets are nil and word of mouth is everything, the negative effects of a bad culture are multiplied a hundred fold. Like a frog slowly boiled in the water pot, the bad culture eats into the bottom-line. Firing and rehiring every bad apple eats up time, money, and energy, so maybe you cut costs on training, or use lower-quality products and equipment. Before you know it, your reputation is tanked and your books are in the red. The root of the problem isn’t the business model, it’s the culture!

It’s corporate anthropology 101: defining what you’re about, attracting your tribe, and keeping them. As Curt puts it, “Instead of ‘We need to hire someone who knows spray foam,’ it becomes ‘We need to hire someone I’d like to hang out with,’” By championing culture, your tribe’s power will grow. Is it possible for everyone in a workplace to be best friends forever? Of course not. Personalities will always clash and disagreements are a given, especially in such a labor-intensive work environment. But a strong culture to fall back on makes these squabbles hurt less. Even better when employees give direct input on how to make their workplace a place to be proud of.

Fortunately, Curt and Kevin had the foresight to hone in on culture pretty early on. They paid close attention to the company’s growing pains, and began to morph from just another foam company into arguably one of Alberta’s finest. Today, Beyond has 80 employees and counting. As their motto states, “We build into our people who build something Beyond.” Their employees have access to a full buffet of resources. Beyond Group’s proprietary Employee Experience 1st (EX1) program consists of eight focus areas designed to develop the entire person. Employees can opt in to take advantage of modules like conflict resolution training, financial stability planning, and advanced skills development. And these are just a handful of EX1’s offerings. According to Curt and Kevin, “The employee buy-in has been remarkable because they see leadership genuinely investing in their personal and professional development.”

The Heart of a Servant & The Soul of a Lion

As leaders, Curt & Kevin are guided by the mantra “Belong, Create, Mastery.” Coaching is a vital aspect of all three values. They encourage other business owners not to struggle alone, but to reach out to the spray foam community for guidance. For many, this may seem like a big no-no. Aren’t other businesses the competition, enemies, even? But these guys don’t see it that way. While they concede that owning a business is akin to surviving in a jungle, what separates humans from other apex predators is our ability to learn from each other. To them, when one company wins, the whole industry gets stronger.

Curt and Kevin want to take the entire spray foam industry under their wing and grow the workforce of tomorrow. It’s a lofty goal, but they have the technical chops to back it up. Beyond Group has 19 different rigs. Their foam division averages about 50 sets of foam each month, alternating between favorite brands Huntsman, Elastochem, Carlisle, and Polysource. For concrete lifting, HMI has never let them down. Their relationships with these foam suppliers are an important part of the “Belong” mantra. Alberta’s climate is no joke, either. Both the team and their reactors frequently gear up to work in -20 degree environments. Keeping morale high ensures their team is ready for anything.

Their servants’ hearts extend beyond the industry and into their personal lives. Curt is a board member for Baja Mexico, a construction non-profit that builds homes for those in need. When he’s not traveling or working, he volunteers with the youth by coaching his children’s sports teams. Kevin fosters rescue dogs and facilitate the adoption process, expending time and energy to make sure man’s best friend is cared for.

Their commitment to service shines through in Beyond Group’s professional portfolio as well. Sure, they’ve run the gamut of highly technical industrial jobs, like Petrofina, and tackled huge, high-stakes commercial jobs like the BMO conference center. But the projects they’re most proud of are those that center the community. An example is their work on Calgary’s New Central Library, a public space accessible to every member of the community. They’re currently working on another project for the Calgary Government to turn over one million square feet of empty retail space into affordable housing. Significant projects like these pump up the entire team by playing right into their mission statement: “We create warm, safe places and happy people.”

Courtesy and Dignity, Caught in 4K

All of this talk about culture, values, and respect is directly applicable to the way the Beyond team conducts themselves on job sites, particularly in residential homes. One time, Kevin was inside a customer’s home preparing a quote. Apparently, one of the homeowners had missed the memo about the visit from their friendly neighborhood spray foam guy, and he came waltzing out of the shower with nary a robe or towel in sight. Talk about being under-insulated!

Both he and Kevin were mortified by the mishap, but Kevin saw a teachable moment for himself and the team. He recognized that he was an intruder in the man’s personal space, however unwittingly. From that day forward, Beyond implemented an “announcement protocol” to always state their presence in an area before proceeding with their job duties. Though the guy never followed up on the quote, the incident is a reminder that courtesy and compassion are just as applicable in construction as in any other.

Curt Janzen and Kevin Boschee know that no investment is perfect or mistake-proof. Still, Beyond Group chooses to take risks and defy norms by inviting their team to make decisions alongside leadership, and have a direct say in their futures. Investing in their employees is an investment in the company, and it’s a strategy that pays infinite dividends—at the bank, in the heart, and Beyond.

Congratulations, Curt and Kevin, for being named Spray Foam Magazine’s 2025 Contractor of the Year. Your resilience, hard work, and dedication are an inspiration to all. Every time you fire up that new shiny rig, let it be a reminder of your incredible achievements so far on your amazing life journey.