Journal Profile: Mary Kopp shares lessons learned from three decades in moving business
Mary Kopp knows the meaning of back-breaking work.
She bought ABC Longhorn Moving Inc. in 1989 for about $30,000. Its first big job was moving tech company Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to a new site in Austin. After hauling furniture through a hot office attic for hours, Kopp lay down on the cold lobby floor, completely exhausted.
“One of my movers came over and told me, ‘Mary, you can’t do that,’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m not used to this.”
Now Kopp is CEO of the business, which does about $1 million annually in revenue with three back-office employees and a handful of contractors. Instead of physically being part of the moves these days she spends her time crafting the company’s strategy and setting its future course.
Kopp has seen the boom-and-bust cycle of business up close, from the bursting of the dot-com bubble to the dark days of the Great Recession (“No one was moving” in those days, she said). For her, the most important lesson entrepreneurs and business owners can learn quickly is to “understand that there are ups and downs in both life and in business, and you’ve got to go with the flow.
“I learned that through many tears, through a lot of stress and driving myself crazy,” she added. That meant cutting overhead during slow periods and scaling up with contract work when the orders were coming in fast. Compared with the dearth of business during the late 2000s, the now-booming economy of Central Texas has led to the opposite problem. In Austin’s tight job market, which is near full employment, Kopp struggles to find workers with manual labor skills and the desire to spend all day moving heavy objects into and out of trucks.
Business is so hot these days Kopp reported the company has been tapped to even move tiny offices with only a single desk or to go into an occupied office and rearrange the furniture.
She is also torn over Austin’s evolution into a much busier, more popular place: “As a citizen of Austin, I don’t always like the growth and what it brings like traffic. As a business owner, I love the frigging growth.”
While ABC Longhorn Moving’s background is in commercial moving, Kopp said they do almost as many residential moves, although commercial moves still account for the vast majority of revenue considering the cost of moving a 50- or 100-person office is much higher than even a luxury home. The business is expanding with a lucrative niche in senior housing facilities and large government offices.
So now Kopp is preparing for the next generation of leadership at ABC Longhorn. She hired her nephew, Scott Durkee, a few years ago and has been grooming him to take over. Kopp recently hired a second salesperson to help grow the business.
Whatever turns the economy takes, Kopp is working to insulate the business from those cyclical hiccups — while striving to simplify her personal life as she imagines what’s next.
Q&A
What is the biggest misconception about owning a business? That right off the bat you make a lot of money. You’ve got to work really, really hard to get customers, staff, and everybody to believe in you.
What’s the most important piece of advice you’ve ever received when it comes to business? The golden rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.
What have you learned about managing? You can’t expect people to act a certain way. Whether you’re talking to clients or employees, people are just who they are and you’ve got to respect them for that.
How do you deal with stress? I exercise: I go to the gym at least three days a week and a dance class on Tuesday nights. My husband and I love to walk as well.
What’s your favorite type of music? Country. Any kind.
What do you like to eat? My husband does the cooking. He loves to grill.
Where do you go when you want to get away? We’ve got some land up on Lake Buchanan, 1.25 acres, and we like to sit out on the porch and watch the sunset.
What was your first job? One of my first jobs after high school was selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners door to door.
What was your worst on-the-job experience? When I was working with two guys on a Bug Master business, we had our office in my apartment, so I’d do office stuff while they would go and do sales during the day, then at night, we’d all do the exterminations. The last straw for me was
MARY KOPP
Title: CEO, ABC Longhorn Moving Inc.
Hometown: Tachikawa, Japan (a city within Tokyo that used to house an Air Force base; her father was an officer)
Age: 64
Family: Husband, Daniel Sampier (Mary’s advice for entrepreneurs: find a spouse who is supportive of all the time you’re going to spend on the business)
Email: mary.kopp@abclonghornmoving.com
