By his own admission, Trent Johnson wasn’t exactly a normal kid. “My friends collected baseball cards,” he explains. “Me? I collected hats.” It was, he says, an obsession.
But then, so was his entrepreneurial drive. Trent started his own lawn-mowing business at an early age, leasing a mower from his mom and dad until he’d earned enough to buy his own. He sold the operation to attend business school – somewhat prematurely, it turns out, since he didn’t get accepted. Trent became a teacher instead, which lasted only a couple of years. It was a job that would’ve been great, he says, if it weren’t for the parents.
Life has a funny way of course-correcting, though. Trent was working as a ranch hand for the owners of Greeley Hat Works, a local institution that first opened its doors back in 1909.
