Keep a Founder’s Mentality feat. Dan Tinker ’04

Owl Have You Know

How do you take a business from bankruptcy to an $18 billion acquisition?

Today’s guest is Dan Tinker, CEO and President of SRS Distribution and Rice Business alum. When Dan took over SRS, the company was bankrupt. But under his steadfast and visionary leadership, SRS profits grew rapidly over 16 years, culminating in an acquisition deal with Home Depot for $18.25 billion – the largest acquisition in Home Depot’s history.

Dan joins host Maya Pomroy ’22 to chat about the major deal and how it’s turned many of his frontline employees into millionaires. The pair also discuss Dan’s decision to pursue a Rice MBA at 26, his philosophy around leadership, and his passion for philanthropy and supporting veterans.

Episode Guide:

01:24 Journey to SRS Distribution

04:02 Early Career Challenges and Successes

07:04 Leadership Philosophy and Team Building

10:14 Pursuing an MBA at Rice

13:37 Building SRS and Private Equity Insights

16:08 Acquisition by Home Depot

19:52 Navigating Culture Integration

23:23 Crucial Leadership Skills

30:09 Philanthropy and Giving Back

34:52 Future Plans and Aspirations

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

How redefining risk helped Dan make better business decisions

28:21: I had a great professor at Rice tell me the definition of profit is the reward a company deserves for taking risks. That’s the best definition of profit I’ve ever heard, and that stuck with me. And so, risk doesn’t mean risk in the sense of, like, I’m doing something risky. It just means doing new things, trying different things to find different ways to accelerate the growth of the company. But it’s a bias to action is what, really, it means. Let’s move forward, and let’s not get stuck in Groundhog Day and monotonous work. [28:59]: Let’s try to push and expand in different ways all the time. Growth fuels promotions and internal growth, and it has a way of building on itself and building snowballing momentum that people just get caught up with the energy, and it’s contagious, which is super powerful.

On having the ability to ignore things that don’t move the needle

24:07: The skill that I wouldn't have guessed coming out of business school, that I think I've gotten honed in, and it served me very, very well, is I think I have a really good ability to ignore the things that don't move the needle. I mean, being a CEO and being in charge of everything, the whole enterprise, you have to know what's your highest and best use of your time. And I've always been able to really stick to the strong points, that I had a good understanding of what's going to drive shareholder value creation, what's going to drive customer wins, what's going to drive supplier partnerships, what's going to drive growth.

How private equity fueled SRS's remarkable growth

12:49: Private equity gets a bad rap in a lot of worlds, and it's so unwarranted, in my opinion. Where else in the world can you just dream up an idea, build a team, go to a private equity partner if you don't have capital or come from a rich family, and go borrow the money or have them infuse your capital in your business to sell part of the company, and then they provide you enough capital to get as big as you could possibly be successfully? And we've done that. We started SRS with only 12 million dollars and bought the company SRS out of bankruptcy for 12 million dollars. The company we just sold to for $ 18.25 billion, we paid only 12 million dollars for just 16 years ago. And then made that much wealth creation because we had different great private equity sponsors for about five-year runs in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd phases. So, I'm a big proponent of private equity.

Show Links:

• Transcript
  
  

Guest Profiles:

• Dan Tinker | SRS Distribution
  
  

Listen to The Sky Is Not the Limit feat. Rawand Rasheed here: https://business.rice.edu/owlhaveyouknow/season-4-episode-1