I LOVE boring non-Silicon Valley, family-owned businesses.

This one's a good one: ABC Supply, a roofing material business. 1 of the largest private companies in America with $10billion in revenue.

The founders are Ken, Diane Hendricks, worth $8 billion.

Here's there story

After dropping out of high school, Ken Hendricks started a roofing business in 1963 in Wisconsin. Simple business.

After 7 years they had about 500 roofers on staff.

To keep his employees busy during winters, he and his wife started buying, fixing, and flipping real estate

While running his roofing business, Ken noticed two things:

1. Most supplies who sold him his roofing material were shockingly wasteful with patchy supply chains

2. Because they were local (not national), their customer service wasn't great.

So, he had an idea: start a national supplier of roofing materials.

His goal was to have local market expertise and service with centralized support and cost efficiencies.

ABC launched in 1982 with one location. Today they have 700+.

Ken partnered with his wife Diane to build ABC after they gave their first roofing business to their employees.

On his relationship with his wife: "I'm the one out front, getting things started," says Hendricks. "Diane is the finisher, taking things down to the last detail."

The pair expanded ABC by both buying up local roofing businesses as well as starting new ones in small cities.

This is a very common strategy. Standard Oil did it, Waste Management did it, and many, many others.

His goal was to keep the staff in place.

To finance the deals, the family borrowed from local banks. In fact, I'm pretty sure the family still owns 100% of the business.

Ken said ABC's ability to buy businesses is why they've succeeded so well:

“I’ll walk in and look at a financial statement and I’ll spot fraud like that. It’s a sixth sense.” More ordinary, five-sensed entrepreneurs may need a little help dissecting the financials.

After getting a lead of a potential business to buy, he calls them himself. Delegating that initial contact suggests a lack of serious interest, Hendricks says.

For each acquisition, Hendricks has a 5 person fact-finding team. Experts in accounting, human resources, and tech.

All members must have strong people skills “because they’ll be the ones working with the company after the acquisition,” says Hendricks.

He also talks with the staff a ton...

“Walk in the back room and talk to the warehouse guy or the forklift operator and say, ‘If you were running this business, what would you do differently?’ ” says Hendricks.

“I guarantee if you fixed what they tell you, 95% of the time that would be a successful business."

After buying, Hendricks gets all employees of his new business together + explains what is possible.

He talks about growth opportunities and management jobs. He tells his team to dream big.

“The larger horizon just got bigger,” says Hendricks. “So their individual horizons should get bigger, too.”

Ken passed away in 2007. Diane is the chairwoman of the business.

The company does over $10 billion a year in sales.

A few things that I've learned studying Ken and Diane:

1. Straight shooters can win. You don't have to be slick.

2. Roofing isn't inherently inspiring, but Ken found a good schtick: helping blue-collar workers improve their lives.

"My whole life is about trying to treat the working man fairly and give him a good opportunity. If you've got a job you have pride. You can dream. You can go home and talk about your kids going to college."

I think that's pretty great.

Of course, the Hendricks to have some controversy. Can't leave that out.

Many don't like how they buy businesses. If they buy a company and the workers don't turn around, they have no problem replacing them. They're aggressive about this.

"Wrong location? Move it," he says. "Wrong people? Replace 'em.

The family also has super strong opinions and not everyone likes that they're the unelected mayors of their town in Wisconsin - but hey, that's what it takes to grow.

If you wanna read more about the Hendricks, check this out: https://www.inc.com/magazine/20061201/entrepreneur-hendricks.html

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