Mother Earth Gardens cultivates legacy in CEO Next

Mother Earth Gardens cultivates legacy in CEO Next

When Karen O’Connor, co-owner of Mother Earth Gardens, joined CEO Next, she wasn’t chasing more locations or a bigger revenue, she was thinking about the legacy of her business.

She acquired Mother Earth Gardens original location in South Minneapolis in 2007, expanded it to a second location in Northeast Minneapolis, and built a successful gardening service as well. Today, the business is well known among gardeners and houseplant lovers for specializing in organic gardening and sustainably grown plants.

Karen and her co-founder are happy with the business, but she wasn’t sure exactly how to pass on a beloved, values-driven business while shaping the next chapter.

“We weren’t really taking it to scale, but it turned out that, the information that we got was amazing for us to figure out for how we’re going to pass this on and how the next owner might scale,” said Karen.

She said CEO Next gave her the clarity, peers, and systems to answer those questions with confidence. The cohort, from Elevate Hennepin, brings together successful business leaders to learn from experts and each other.

The cohort helped her reframe how she looked at the business.

“One of the first things we did when we did CEO Next was make an operational chart,” said Karen. “That helped me define the roles a little better.”

With better definitions of the roles above the day-to-day retail operations, she said it got easier to identify the right hires and move job functions to the right people. Since acquiring the business, she said she and her co-owner did what many small business owners do: whatever needs to be done. And while they had made similar charts before, taking a fresh look at a chart laid the groundwork for a more systematic approach, especially as the owners were thinking about stepping back in the years to come.

Karen worked with multiple experts, for no-cost she adds enthusiastically, including a business-valuation expert through the CEO Next cohort. Each helped her get a clear view of her business and chart a course for the next phase of business.

“We were really challenged by looking at the bigger picture, the business valuation, and how you move this behemoth to the next thing,” said Karen. “We figured out a route to employee ownership, and also a path for a potential management buyout, potential for an outside buyer. Laying out all of those options was just great, incredibly valuable.”

She said there were all sorts of great insights and novel ideas from her peer group too. She said there are a handful of new ideas she brought back to the business and an ongoing network of peers she keeps in touch with—a great help with new challenges or thought partnership.

Above all, she said CEO Next, an investment from Hennepin County, reinvigorated her entrepreneurial spirit for the next phase of her business life.

“It helped to light a fire, it seemed a lot easier to start the business than to unwind the business,” said Karen. “It was just life changing for us. It really was, it completely flipped our perspective.”

She said her best advice for business owners facing big questions: spend an hour and tune into a future information session to learn how CEO Next can help sort out your big questions.