A native to Springfield, Brent was a graduate of Kickapoo High School in 1991 and went on to pursue his college education at Kansas State University where he graduate in 1995 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Mass Communications and an outside concentration in Marketing. His family has been in the retail grocery business in the Springfield area for over 35 years and owned and operated both the Smitty’s Supermarket and Summer Fresh Supermarket chains. Brent was an executive recruiter in the food and beverage industry for almost 5 years until joining Summer Fresh shortly after its inception in 1999. He worked his way up through the organization holding positions of department manager, assistant store manager, store manager, director of operations and finally, for the 5 years prior to the sale of his company, he was president and chief executive officer. Brent and his team almost doubled the size of the company during his tenure as president growing the company from 6 stores to 10 stores with the addition of two new banners to their conventional format-two Save A Lot Food Stores and a Cash Saver Food Outlet were added during the past couple of years. When courted by and sold to another regional grocery chain in 2012, the company was pushing revenues upwards of $60 Million annually and employed over 350 associates. Outside of his guiding a successful supermarket chain, Brent is also the owner of a local restaurant and has provided leadership in serving on the Ozark Empire Grocers Association and Literacy Council boards as well as holding the position of President of the Springfield K-Life board. He was also a part of the Leadership Springfield Class 22. Brent is passionate about helping small businesses find and maintain success in what is sure to be a more competitive and complex environment in the years to come…no matter what the industry. It is his experience and success as a small business owner and his aspiration to help council and guide other small businesses that led to the start of Bookkeeping Plus.
“I have always been fortunate to have had great partnerships through the years…partnerships with people that helped me move my company forward. If it were not for these people, I am not sure where we would have ended up. I was a grocery guy that found out how important it was to think beyond stacking cans. As the marketplace became more saturated and competitive, it wasn’t good enough to simply work harder…we were going to have to work smarter. I realized that the true success of an organization starts with building efficiencies, implementing and auditing best practices, creating internal controls and, most importantly, good accounting. Good business starts with good bookkeeping.”