Banking on KC – Shannon Hoffmann of GreenAcres Market
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Kelly Scanlon: Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Shannon Hoffmann, a former co-owner of GreenAcres Markets, which is a chain of natural food stores that offer organic and all natural products and vitamins from national brands and locally sourced specialty brands.
GreenAcres sold to Healthier Choices Management Corporation about a year ago. And Shannon's here today to talk with us about family business, which so many of you are listeners are a part of, and really from soup to nuts, from founding it, building it, and then finally to the sale. So welcome, Shannon.
Shannon Hoffmann: Thank you, Kelly. I'm glad to be here.
Kelly Scanlon: Well, I know you have an awful lot to offer today, so let's just get right to it. Let's go back to the beginning. 1994.
Shannon Hoffmann: Yep.
Kelly Scanlon: Your mom, Barb Hoffmann, launched Green Acres markets in Wichita.
Shannon Hoffmann: Yes.
Kelly Scanlon: And really it was part of her own health journey. It was, you know, her entrepreneurial journey was in parallel to what she was experiencing health-wise.
So it was to solve a need. Okay. She gets started in 1994 and you're working with her, but then she invited you to open a second store in Kansas City in 2008. So talk to us about that transition from, uh, working with your mom and her business. I believe you had a podcast or a radio show too at the time, really opening up a whole new market. I mean, that was a big deal.
Shannon Hoffmann: It was. So that was actually our second family business. So our original one is an interior landscaping company, which my mom started when my older sister and I were very young. And through that and lifting plants and just the physicality of that business and my older sister's handicap, my mom kind of lost her health. Her back kind of gave out and she had a couple of unsuccessful back surgeries and then she kind of found alternative health through a doctor and being the type A entrepreneur that she was, she wanted to share it with the world.
And so I was actually in college back east, and there was a trade show in Baltimore, and she called me and said, “Hey, I wanna open a health food store. I can't make it to the trade show. Will you train down there and get me some notes?”
And I said, sure mom. Oh sure mom, what do you, what do you need? I just need to know how to open a store. So that was the framework I was given. So I jumped on the train, I went down, I went to the trade show, took a bunch of notes, met people, grabbed business cards, FedExed it all off to her, and within six months she was picking the location and was opening our first Green Acres.
Kelly Scanlon: Okay. That was in Wichita.
Shannon Hoffmann: That was in Wichita. Right. And that was way before its time, really. So that was 1994? That was 1994. Yes. She opened that and I graduated school and I came back and joined the family business. And my mom did a really great thing. I had come back with this big business degree supposedly, and she said, well, you've never worked here yet, so you get to start on the floor.
Kelly Scanlon: Oh.
And you get to start on the registers. And so, you know, learning a business from the ground up, I think, is really important. I had always been involved in the interior landscaping part, but I had not been involved in the store part,
Kelly Scanlon: Right. And, and what a way to meet the customers and learn about establishing those kinds of relationships where you're gonna get the repeat customers. Being able to work in all the different positions, how did being able to work in various parts of the business help you as you did ascend, and then eventually open your own store?
Shannon Hoffmann: So, we had opened our two businesses side by side. So, I actually took over some of the interior landscaping operations while she was kind of building the natural product side. And I was at a stage of figuring out what my career was gonna be, but I really kind of got involved in all of it because that's just how we were as a family. It was, you know, in a family business, the business is often another family member.
Kelly Scanlon: Absolutely.
Shannon Hoffmann: Yeah. And so you talk about it 24/7. So, dinner conversations would be all about that. And then we launched the radio show during that time because we realized we were ahead of our time and we needed to educate people on who we were and why we were there.
So we started a syndicated radio show, or really, a local show to just educate people on what's vitamin C? What's the importance of it? Organics, you know, what can you expect when you come in and shop with us? So, again, ahead of our time, you know, now we have podcasts. Back then, it was a radio show. But it really put us on the map, and people started to not be afraid to come in through the front door and ask us questions and explore this whole new arena.
And so I think that was such a big learning for me – to realize you can understand business, but, like you said, Kelly, until you start interacting with your customers and really seeing what their need is, you can assume what their need is, but they may be a long ways away from where you think they are.
And you have to bridge that gap. And that's kind of what we did with the radio show and reaching out into the community.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah. And, and you talk about just meeting people and meeting their needs and, and to be where they are. I always say every day is a pop quiz in business, you can have an MBA, you can go to, you know, whatever, prestigious university, but you know, you walk in and you don't know if the computers are down and you've got a, a customer who's unhappy and, oh, by the way, your suppliers calls and said, we can't get in your major product today.
Shannon Hoffmann: Oh, you've worked with us in our business, Kelly.
Kelly Scanlon: You know, it's, it's always, it's always something.
So you learning on your feet like that and learning how to be spontaneous, there's no price you can put on that. Well, eventually you span seven stores, right?
Shannon Hoffman: We did, yes.
Kelly Scanlon: Okay. I'm always curious about this. How did you maintain that founding mission that you've talked about as you scaled the operation? So often the first location's always successful or is successful, and then, you start opening others and well, the people there don't quite buy into it, so they start kind of putting their little twist on things or, you know, there's just all kinds of different things that can happen, that divert, from your mission.
So how did you keep that across all the stores?
Shannon Hoffmann: So the first one opened in '94, and then I opened the one here in Kansas City in 2006. So it had 12 years under its belt. It was definitely the firstborn, the older sibling. We had never done a second location. Right. I had actually left and worked in the industry for about two to three years out in Denver, Boulder and got some backside supply side experience.
And then I got the bug to open my own. And so we had watched the Kansas City market for quite a while and we knew there was an opportunity and we had a chance to partner, uh, with the Briarcliff group and they were developing up there again, another life lesson for mom. Um, she said, this is great. I'm, I'm thrilled you wanna do this, but.
You need to do this on your own. We're here. You can use the branding and, and the connections, but you need to have the experience from the ground up. So I went out, I talked to the banks, I raised the money, I built the store, I opened the store, and then all of a sudden we were a chain of two. And so we wanted to, where you walked into either location and you had the same experience.
That was important. So I think. And I was young and I wanted to build a bunch more, and then the economy tanked the next year in 2007.
Kelly Scanlon: Oh, yes.
Shannon Hoffmann: So that's where we earned our stripes. Right. Um, we were not established here in Briarcliff yet, so we had to build it one person at a time and build those relationships.
And then, so I just started. Kind of duplicating those efforts here of reaching out into the community, building the relationships and helping figure out what the Northland needed when it came to this. And so we had that store then for another 10 years. And then we bought, had the opportunity to buy the five stores.
And that was a great story because mom had actually. Been in contact with those owners for a long time, just checking in with them once or twice a year. How's it going? And they were our main competitor in Wichita and they also had two locations in Oklahoma. Fast forward the time came, right? We put the deal together and then we.
Kelly drank from a fire hose for the next two, two years at least, because we got five stores overnight and they were all different. And they were different from us and they had been in competition with us. But the fundamental core, they had a passion for health education, just like we did.
So we went to there, we said, how do these match? And let's, let's build on that. And so when you talk about building your core and having structure, we knew it was gonna be about communication. Helping them understand where we're coming from, where we wanted to go. We put it, we started to put structure in place, but we really had to bring them all together, even as five stores.
They were all different. So it was like getting five new members in your family. Who all were completely different. So, um, we would drill it down to, you know, 20 minute meetings every day covering a topic. We'd get the managers on the phone. So a lot of it was trusting our gut. We didn't have a roadmap for bringing five stores on, and we had actually had a third store in there in Tulsa that we opened and closed. So we had gone through that process, so we eventually rebranded them all GreenAcres. So we knew we wanted to get it where it was a unified experience for our customer. And then we worked on putting structure on the backside.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah, so, so it sounds like communication was vital. Daily communication …
Shannon Hoffmann: Vital.
Kelly Scanlon: … and then really getting serious about putting those processes in place so that it did, and that goes back to the, you know, the E-Myth and Peter Gerber and can this run without me being here. Mm-hmm. You know, you got a process to follow. And, and so everything starts to, well, I say this casually, but humming along.
I mean, there's this, we talked about there's always pop quizzes, but you, you get, you get things going. And that was really about maintaining the why, the mission, and. And everybody on the same page, but looking at the numbers, what kind of metrics did you track to ensure that the business stayed healthy as it scaled?
Because, you know, you were in different geographic locations and so there's idiosyncrasies built into the different geographic, um, locations. Yes. So what, what did you find that you could track that really gave you a good idea of whether the stores, despite their disparate locations could still, you know, were still thriving?
Shannon Hoffmann: So we had the two locations. When we bought the five, we rolled it up as one company, so we had to kind of get that established and in place. Luckily, the metrics were the same for all the companies. They were strong in supplements. We were strong in supplements, so we kind of knew the metrics from the industry, what percentage of sales this should be, produce, supplements.
Grocery frozen, and we had delis as well, which is a whole nother business within inside a business. The thing about grocery retail, it's a business of pennies, nickels, dollars, and, and tens of thousands of them, right? So you realize you can get some top line things such as cost of goods, your main expenses, but you're working on race or thin margins.
So. One little blip and you can knock yourself right out into, into a troubled situation. And again, each store was different size and in a different location, and so we actually had to build different p and ls for all of them. And, and manage them all separately until we could get some traction together that there was some continuity between them.
And then luckily we worked with all the same vendors in all the supply chains. Well, that's helpful.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah. Was the same, but it's a pretty tight industry at least then it was.
Shannon Hoffmann: It's a tight industry. Yeah. But like coverage and brokerages, they often split between Kansas and Missouri, or Oklahoma went to the south and Missouri went to the north.
So we were in this Bermuda Triangle, but we're entrepreneurs, so we just took charge and we helped educate the vendors on what we needed. If we waited for them and worked within their processes, we would've never made it as far as we did. Our motto was gracious persistence.
Kelly Scanlon: I love that. Gracious persistence.
Shannon Hoffmann: We were going to be persistent. We were gonna do it in a gracious way, but we were not going to stop asking for what we needed. We acted like a big chain the entire time. And then right after we bought the stores, we had 20 competitors come in across all of our markets, so we had to get refined and smart very fast.
Yeah.
Kelly Scanlon: So you went and kind of forged the path. You cleared all the brush and all the obstacles in the industry. Yes. Educated the marketplace and then here comes the competition.
Shannon Hoffmann: The thing we had going Kelly, is the supplements. It's like going to the hair salon, right? You build a relationship with your hairstylist.
You're not as quick to leave because it's taken a while. They like to talk to you, they get to know you. They get to know your family, that's the supplements department because they come in, they tell you all about what's going on in their family, their stress levels. I can't sleep, I wanna lose weight.
So they build a relationship with our staff. The competition was more in your commodities. You know, your produce, the boxed goods on the shelf, where they don't need as much education or a personal relationship. But that's still an important part of the business. So I think, anytime you're running a business, you have to know each segment because you could get hit in one, right?
And the other one you've gotta make sure is solid. Then when the competition comes in and hits that one, you gotta make sure the others are solid. So it's like having a pinball going back and forth. You have to make sure you're knocking it in the right direction,
Kelly Scanlon: Being a family business, and for so many years, you know, you and your mom and there were a couple other relatives involved to a certain extent, I believe.
And then you start bringing on these other markets, and they're non-family members. So, talk about culture and how you were able to merge the culture.
Shannon Hoffmann: My dad was in the business too. He really focused on the mechanical side. So when we got all the stores, he really spearheaded the remodels and things like that.
And then we had a person, Matt, who co-hosted the radio show with me, who's been with us almost 30 years and he's kind of our supplement guru. We all had to divide and conquer. Right. So we each took an area. I kind of took Oklahoma as my focus. Since my parents were located in Wichita, they focused on those stores.
And then I had Kansas City as well. And you know, when you roll up a family business, I think one of the most important parts, again, is internal communication. We had to sit down and have some tough conversations because we were used to running everything ourselves, and when you roll it up, there isn't room for two at the top.
There isn't room for everybody in every arena, but we were also putting out fires, so to slow down long enough to put our own structure in place. We made some mistakes. Kelly, you know, sometimes we had to focus on a store that wasn't doing as well, so we had to hope that the ones, uh, in the other markets were holding their own.
But the key was the managers – investing in our managers. And we really approached the business as if they were entrepreneurs. They were responsible for everything inside those four walls.
Kelly Scanlon: Those conversations, earlier daily conversations, but what other things did you do with the leadership to ensure continuity, which is what we were talking about earlier, to ensure continuity, but also to address inconsistency, just to embrace that leadership, as you put it, the entrepreneurial role. You know, some people are fine, you know, they can, they can lead a store, but they're not really entrepreneurs, so how did you address that?
Shannon Hoffmann: We involve them in all aspects of the process, honestly. And we asked them to give us feedback and input on what they saw working, what they didn't see working. But we brought our structures in. We had a good budget structure. We had weekly budget calls, we had weekly operational calls. So we kept that touch point there.
And um, we also did different types of personality testing, because we kind of knew what we needed in the leadership, especially in the markets where we weren't there and we didn't want it. We started in the beginning, Kelly, we weren't on the floor. We've always been more behind the scenes, so we've always built it through the teams as best as we could.
And they were the ones that were right in front with the customer. So, we empowered them. It was our responsibility to make their job easier and handle all the chaos or everything behind the scenes from setting up the, the, the budget structures so that they had simple metrics they could follow.
They didn't have to get into the weeds that we got into behind the scenes, and they didn't have to ask permission.
Kelly Scanlon: They didn't have to ask permission. Right. Especially when they've got a customer in front of them that needs something. They could just handle that.
Shannon Hoffmann: Absolutely. Yeah. We were big in asking for forgiveness, not necessarily permission, because again, to grow, sometimes you have to do that.
Successful people are comfortable being uncomfortable, so we would do a lot of growth seminars and education with them. We tried to help them be the best that they could in the role that they were in, and people would leave us as a result sometimes. And so as long as they give us 110% effort, while they were with us, we were their biggest cheerleaders when they left.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah. So let's talk about, let's fast forward now you've, you've established, uh, seven locations. You have managers in place who, because of the way you are empowering them, they feel ownership, they're making decisions, and they always have to ask.
Permission for that. Uh, but now it's time for succession planning. Um, it faces every business at some point or another, uh, whether you're prepared for it or not. Something happens and you're, you're forced to make decisions. So often succession planning though, can tear family businesses apart, but that did not happen.
What did you and your family do to plan for the transition, uh, in leadership and operational control when you had to start discussing the sale?
Shannon Hoffmann: So there's a couple of layers in that. I think we are a little bit of a different entrepreneurial family because it wasn't that one family member built it and then one came in later.
We had the original store, and then I had been involved for over 20 years. So we built it together. When it came to succession planning, where we were the weakest was the layer between us and the stores. The support layer. Yes. So we ended up doing so much of it, and there were probably things that we let fall through the cracks because we were trying to cover it all ourselves.
So building that, that general manager, that regional manager, we tried a couple different times, but I think after getting the five stores we were so used to having our. Fingers and absolutely everything. We struggled to let go of some of that. We actually were thinking about the sale before the pandemic, and then the pandemic just put that on hold and then shook everything up.
Right? Right. And so as we were coming out of that. We knew we had to get a general manager solidly in place, and we found her internally. She was actually in charge of our pricing and POS, but she knew every aspect of the business. And you also look at the life stage of the business. It was no longer in an entrepreneurial phase, so.
Training her into this role made a lot of sense. We just focused on building her through the pandemic and coming out. So she was really the solid one, and she was on the road a lot. She and I were the ones that traveled to the stores the most because we always wanted to have a presence in the out of town stores as much as we could.
And through the pandemic, of course, everyone got familiar with Zoom, but in retail, technology isn't always your staff's strong suit, they're on the floor, they don't wanna be in the office, they don't wanna read their email, they don't wanna be on a Zoom call. They wanna be with the customer. So we realized we still had to go to them.
And so as we got close and we were able to find a buyer, we really focused on having all the areas buttoned up as best as possible. I think my parents and I. All knew we wanted to exit out together. Okay. And so, so,
Kelly Scanlon: so that decision was made. That decision was made because you were in agreement on that.
Mm-hmm. You didn't have some of the wrangling that goes on and the posturing that goes on. Okay.
Shannon Hoffmann: But I do acknowledge that that is there and, and I think coming from the framework that we do, and now with the, the hindsight, you know, there, there's a lot of stumbling blocks and pitfalls I think families could avoid by having those hard conversations earlier on.
Kelly Scanlon: Right. And, and some people say you should start thinking of, and this has always made me laugh, but because you just think about a startup entrepreneur just worried about getting their product or their service out and getting new customers and so forth. But they tell you, you should start planning for your exit as soon as you open your doors.
And that's, again, that always makes me smile or laugh. So when would you suggest you start having those kinds of conversations?
Shannon Hoffmann: I think the minute you start working together. Okay, so if it is something where the younger generation's going to come in, it needs to start then because I think it needs to be clear.
What everybody's going to be in charge of, or how to find your lanes. Yeah, and I think the younger generation coming in needs to have respect for what's been built so far. So many times I wanted to, I wanted to open multiple locations really fast and I, you know, I got my lessons handed to me pretty quickly because until you go to sleep, understanding how to make payroll, how to pay your vendors, how to go through some of those tough times, which, you know, the original entrepreneur.
You don't know the aspects of running a business, you could, you know it on paper, right? Mm-hmm. And yes, you'll bring your ideas in and I think I thought about this before we talked today. If the person coming in can find one aspect of the business to really own and take ownership of it will really establish them with the existing team and probably their, their parents or relatives, whoever's leading it.
If you come in and you're trying to change things or undermine things or trying to get involved in everything and you don't necessarily have that identity within there, I think that's where some of that friction starts because the entrepreneur's like. I've been doing this for years. What are you doing?
Right? And the younger one's like, well, I've been watching it for years. I see what needs to happen, and that's the level of friction that starts. Oh, believe me, we didn't have it figured out and we've had our share of hard discussions. I, I mean, we're talking about families. I mean, and you are family first.
Kelly Scanlon: Yes, you are. Yeah. Families have arguments over where they're gonna go for dinner. You can't get out the door, much less run of business together. So it's to be expected. You all three agreed at the same time, and what finally helped you understand now is the time to sell?
Shannon Hoffmann: I think when you start a business, Kelly.
It often comes from passion. I mean, you go back to the book E-Myth, right? You open a pie shop because you love baking pies. We started this business because we had a passion for alternative health education. Yeah. So it was very personal. Very personal, and the business was very different then.
After going through the pandemic, it was completely different. Look at retail now. Yes. We're having completely different discussions now than we did before, and our buyer knew that and saw that, and they are rolling up Chains of Independence much like Ace Hardware. Did for the hardware stores, right? Right.
Yes. And you don't have second generations coming into the independence, but they're still the lifeblood because they still have the education, they have the answers. I mean, look, we're dealing with health issues every single day. Anxiety's on the rise, obesity's on the rise. People aren't sleeping, and there's just a plethora of products coming out.
Do you know what they are, where they're coming from and how they work? We had established that and that's what will carry Green Acres and the other stores. I think that this buyer, um, is bringing together forward because people still need answers and they need answers from people that will listen to them.
But for us, we were a little worn out. Going through the pandemic. Yes. Everything got shook and knocked on its ear and everything got shifted and it was, it was about being in defense mode. It was no longer about the mission as much for us, and I think it was just time. We also knew we had grown it to a point, we didn't have the resources to take it to the next level.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah, yeah.
Shannon Hoffmann: And my parents were hitting an age if they listen to this, what, I'm not saying they were older, but that maybe it was time for a transition. And I know I was ready to.
Kelly Scanlon: When you look back over everything that you have done, what are some of the pitfalls that family businesses should avoid? Um, when they prepare to sell?
Shannon Hoffmann: I think being emotionally attached is number one. I mean, it's your baby. For my mom, it's still hard. Yeah, I bet. And I was fortunate when we rolled up, I ended up doing a lot of the financial part of the business, so I was able to detach from it a little bit more because I saw the performance and where we were going.
I mean, it was healthy when we sold it, don't get me wrong, but I saw trends and I saw where the industry was. I paid attention to all of that, and there's always a time for an exit. And I wanted time with my family. It wasn't business that we could sit around the table and not talk business 24/7 before it was too late.
Right. Yeah, no, it's funny, we struggled with that in the beginning. We're like, what do we talk about? But as far as a family business, I think you always have to be getting structure in place, and it can't be dependent on keeping people, because when you sell, it scares everybody in the company. And some of the people that you think are your key people might leave, right?
And so if you don't have a structure in place that isn't attached to you guys as the owners, the key leaders. Then it's going to impact value. When you finally get to the point of looking at how this transition's gonna happen, I had a mentor teach me, you do all your work on the front end of a deal, and that could be preparing for a sale. So, work through it, get all those details in place so that when it finally comes out into the open when you're working with your team, you are in the driver's seat, the sale isn't driving you.
Kelly Scanlon: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Hoffmann: I think that is key.
Kelly Scanlon: It is so key. Someone once told me when I was considering selling, are you running from something or are you running to something?
That's great. That's an important difference. You have to wrap your head around.
Shannon Hoffmann: Yes, it is.
Kelly Scanlon: Um, reflecting on building the business, transferring it. Selling it. What single piece of advice would you leave our listeners who are business owners, especially family owned businesses, privately held family, business owners, um, who are embarking on that path today? Just getting started.
Shannon Hoffmann: Honestly, patience – the world is moving so fast and industries are changing so much. Being willing to pivot and have patience. There were many times we thought about selling or buying another store or things like that, but. We saw the opportunity wasn't right, and we had to be patient.
COVID taught us we had to be patient because you had to be the calm one in the storm and we didn't know where it was gonna go. And having faith that you will get there, as long as you stick with it and you have the grit to push yourself through it and remember what your original mission and why you did it in the first place.
Let that be an opportunity, not necessarily a hindrance.
Kelly Scanlon: As you went through the sale of your business, I'm sure you learned a lot of things about the sales process too. So for our listeners, as they're maybe considering getting ready to sell their business, um, what, what are some things about the actual, the sale process itself that surprised you, that you can give them a heads up about?
Shannon Hoffmann: I feel pretty fortunate about our sales process as far as the communication that we had, we did sell to a publicly traded company, so that's a whole different level of due diligence and I think it comes back to having the grit and the patience because when you think you're getting to the end, you're not.
Hmm. There's always something more to discover. There will be a hiccup along the way. No matter how good it's going during a sale, it's no longer about you. It's about what's happening to the people involved in the sale. So it could impact the vendors. They focus on how it's impacting them. The team members focus on how it's impacting them.
So you can't take it personally. It kind of comes back to the four agreements. You can't take it personally, be impeccable with your word. You do your best and don't make assumptions. You follow those four principles and it will carry you through because you do have to have a lot of patience, especially because you can't talk to a lot of people about it.
Your best friends become your accountants and lawyers during the time, which is not necessarily what everybody wants, but it's important to have them in your court and to make sure everybody's communicating, but that you're still driving it. You talked about wanting
Kelly Scanlon: to have more time with your family and be able to talk about things other than business.
So there was that, and you know, your parents are, were getting older, so there's been a little bit of a physical relief there. But let's talk about your identities. So, so often, entrepreneurs, pretty much entire identity is wrapped up in that business. And you wake up one morning and it's like. It's gone. I can no longer make decisions about it.
Those customers aren't my customers anymore, yada, yada, yada. So, it really goes to maybe some feelings of irrelevancy. Talk to us about that.
Shannon Hoffmann: So I'm never gonna speak for my mom because you know, her feelings are her feelings. I know she's probably struggled with it the most out of all of us because she was the original founder and she worked till she was 79, and we still have our interior landscaping company.
But, but Green Acres is where a lot of our time and effort went into. My dad had already kind of stepped out. He didn't have as much of an attachment to it. And for me, I knew it was a stage in my journey, but I also, again, wanted to do this for my whole family. Mm-hmm. For my parents, for me. I also had a chance to open another business on the side, an IV nutrient therapy clinic that I also had to manage and run through COVID, but doing something outside the family business gave me some feedback and confidence different than, is this all I know, right? Do I only know how to work in this structure? I got to see that I could, so I also knew there'd be a future for me.
I didn't really know if I was gonna stay on with them or if they needed me. But I also knew that we had a general manager in place that really filled that bill and being publicly traded, they had the financial part covered, the account, everything else covered. Right. And so I ended up leaving the next day.
And that was quick. That was abrupt, right? It was, um, they didn't even have you stay on for like, six months of consultations or anything? No. They asked if I wanted to be involved in other aspects, but, uh, I was ready. But you're right. It still came the identity. You realize who's in your life and who isn't who was in there by association of the business through, especially through the industry, right?
We were very connected into the industry, but if we're not at the trade shows, and we're not calling them every day, they get into their lives. You get into your lives. But I think what's. Really fortunate Kelly, we're in a business alternative health and natural medicine. We're always growing and expanding and expanding our minds and looking at opportunities.
So I think we just looked at it as, okay, it's time for the new chapter and do some self-reflection. I'm still in that process. Right? Yes, it sounds like. So there's sometimes I wake up and I'm like, oh my gosh, what do I have to do today? But, um, that is a real. Feeling, I think for every entrepreneur.
Kelly Scanlon: Yeah.
It's one that really doesn't get discussed very often.
Shannon Hoffmann: No, it doesn't because most people are like, congratulations. Exactly. You sold your business. Mm-hmm. You're probably traveling and you're, you're, you're enjoying life and retirement and yes, all of that's probably true. But you're still a person at the end of the day who's put their heart and soul into this business, and I think for us, we got super lucky that the name got to keep going.
All of our team got to keep going. It was seamless for the end user, so that made us really happy.
Kelly Scanlon: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Hoffmann: But it's not ours anymore. We walk in and it's, it's not ours. Our names are still, you know, on the quotes on the wall, but sure. It's not ours anymore.
Kelly Scanlon: Shannon, remarkable story. I, I've enjoyed hearing it today and there's a lot of takeaways for our listeners, and I just really appreciate you coming and talking with us about this really important topic.
Shannon Hoffmann: I appreciate the opportunity.
Joe Close: This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Shannon Hoffmann, former owner of GreenAcres Markets for being our guest. On this episode of Banking on KC. Shannon's story is a masterclass in building, scaling, and successfully transitioning a family owned business, especially one that required educating the market from launching a second location to managing a multi-state acquisition.
Shannon offered powerful insights into leadership, succession planning, and staying grounded in your mission during times of uncertainty and growth. Her family's journey is a reminder of the grit, adaptability, and heart that defines so many Kansas City entrepreneurs. Country Club Bank knows that small and family owned businesses are the foundation of our region's economy.
We also understand the complex transitions they face as they grow, scale, and prepare to sell. That's why we're committed to offering financial tools and strategic guidance that help owners protect their legacy and plan confidently for the next chapter. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're Banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank – Member FDIC.