Sam Parr  ⚪️

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."