Sinkhole Sages

Mike Manley and Rodger Bennett don't look like financial clairvoyants. But their knack for sensing economic disaster — and navigating around it — has turned out to be uncanny.

The pair started RAB Foundation Repair LLC, a sinkhole repair company headquartered in Odessa, just when the housing crisis began to decimate the construction sector. Despite the unfortunate economic conditions and new insurance legislation threatening to sink their business, RAB has found a way to rise above it. It has added at least $1 million to annual revenues each year since it began in 2007 and has grown to 52 employees.

Seeing the first signs of the decline of the housing market, Manley, president of RAB, knew he was in trouble. He was then the owner of a mortgage brokerage. “I started to sense something was coming,” he says, “and then the calls stopped coming in.”