Angela Major | Janesville Gazette via AP
Diane Hendricks enters the room where Blackwater founder Erik Prince was supposed to speak before the event was interrupted in protest of the students.
Diane Hendricks did not grow up with the inheritance of celebrities and political leaders. Instead, she spent her childhood on a dairy farm in Wisconsin – eventually training her work ethic to help her create a business empire.
Last week, Hendrix, with a net worth of US $ 11.6 billion (New Zealand $ 18.5 billion), surpassed Forbes’ list of the wealthiest homebrew women in the United States for the fifth consecutive year. Her property relies heavily on ABC Supply, a construction materials company founded with her deceased husband in 1982. She is currently the chairman of the company.
In 2017, Hendrix told Forbes that the work ethic that had become important from an early age was established when he saw his parents run a farm 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. She became pregnant at the age of 17 and had to graduate from high school at her home. .. At the age of 21, she applied for her divorce from her high school lover, and she chose her single career as a single mother, a series of weird things in the office rather than just pursuing success. I got a job. Real estate license.
“Motherhood got in the way really fast and I grew up really fast,” Hendrix said. “It didn’t stop me from wanting to reach my dreams. In fact, I think I’ve become more focused on what I want to achieve.”
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Some of her dreams were simple, Hendrix said: moving to the city and wearing a suit to work every day. Those dreams changed after she met and married roof contractor Ken Hendrix in the 1970s. Together, the duo combined her talents to co-found ABC Supply in Beloit, Wisconsin.
By 1994, the company had 100 locations. For the first time, four years later, annual sales exceeded US $ 1 billion, according to Forbes.
Since his husband’s death in 2007, Hendrix has led ABC Supply on his own. According to the company’s website, the company currently has more than 840 offices and, according to Forbes, is the 23rd largest private company in the country. The ABC Supply website shows that she has acquired the assets of 18 other companies in the last five years, demonstrating her market advantage.
Success would not be possible without controversy. In 2016, the first year Hendrix surpassed Forbes’ list, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “from 2012 to 2014, we did not pay state income tax in a penny.” She wasn’t even in debt for state taxes in 2010, according to the press.
This is not necessarily illegal. Scott Bianchini, Tax Director at ABC Supply, told CNBC Make It that he changed his tax classification from C-corp to S-corp during the year. Under Wisconsin law, businesses can apply to S-corps at the federal level and C-corps at the state level. That is, ABC Supply can be selected from the state tax option status. This could include a check from the company to Hendricks. – If all federal taxes have been paid off.
Today, Hendrix is still based in Beloit, which has less than 37,000 residents. According to Forbes, she spent millions of dollars on local projects to rebuild abandoned real estate and bring new businesses to the state.
In 2017, Hendrix opened a local career center. The center holds workshops to teach junior and senior high school skills such as coding and construction. She told Forbes that the program aims to expose teens to “value for work.”
“Children are like,’Wow, is that how a welder works?'” She said. “They can be welders who go to vocational school and pay $ 50,000 a year. They are good jobs. They are really good jobs.”