HERE'S MY STORY

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Born and raised in beautiful Colorado, Shane Hoefer grew up with an adventurous mentality and a wanderlust spirit for places, people, and new ideas. He attended school at Metropolitan State University of Denver with the goal of becoming a pilot after graduation. But as most things in life, paths and plans tend to change…

His father, Dennis Hoefer, started Rocky Mountain Forest Products (RMFP) in 1974. He always wanted Shane to take over one day, but at the time, Shane had other plans for his future. It wasn’t until he was in college while working for his dad that he started to realize running a company like RMFP had little to do with building materials and everything to do with the game of business. It involves strategy and people, and that resonated with him.

As he began to consider this alternative plan for his life, he met his wife, Susan. Although being a pilot sounded glamorous in his mind, he knew it came with the costs of being away from family for extended periods of time. And after meeting Susan, the idea of a career in aviation became considerably less appealing. He decided to switch his studies to business and ended up following in his father’s footsteps afterall.

MY DAY TO DAY NOW

As you can imagine, he’s had experience in almost every position and management level at RMFP. In fact, he’s never worked for another company in his life. His devotion and knowledge for this industry is insurmountable, and has certainly been vindicated by his enormous success.

Shane runs RMFP with a people-first culture approach, a style that fits into his life ethos of believing in others. After taking the reins of the Colorado-based business from his father, Shane reimagined the company’s leadership style, learning to guide his employees with empathy, while also providing them the autonomy to thrive independently.

His father was an exceptional businessman, but often didn’t take the human element into account. As a second generation CEO, Shane learned a lot from the successes and shortcomings of his father. He sought to bring that compassionate and humane approach back into the blue collar workplace and reform the general philosophy for RMFP going forward. And the results speak for themselves.

In just a few years with Shane as CEO, the morale of employees has never been greater, customers are more satisfied than ever, and sales are astronomical. RMFP went from doing about $10 million in revenue a year to, this past year, doing almost $36 million. Once the company became more humanized, customers responded well. Beyond Shane’s customers, he made it a goal to advocate for a better working environment, establishing internal relationships and ensuring his employees were happy. When people enjoy their working environment, they do their job well. The company benefits and employees enjoy contributing to its success.