Huizenga's Acquisition Empire
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A story about Wayne Huizenga, who built multiple billion-dollar companies through acquiring and consolidating smaller businesses.
"Wayne Huizenga was born in 1937. His parents divorced at a young age, and he went to the army. In his twenties, he started a company called Waste Management with just one truck, going door to door throwing away trash. After about 2 years, he realized the industry had loads of small players who owned little bits and pieces. He decided to buy all of them, acquiring 2-3 companies per week. Waste Management today has a $64 billion market cap and is the biggest waste removal company in the country.
He left Waste Management in 1984, and in 1987, while still in his fifties, he bought one Blockbuster store. He took it public 2 years later. After just 2 years, Blockbuster had $7 million in revenue and 19 stores. Within a few years, he grew it to $4 billion in revenue with 3,000 stores in 11 countries. He sold it to Viacom in 1994 for $8.5 billion. If you had invested $25,000 when Blockbuster went public in 1987, it would have been worth about $1 million when they sold.
He didn't stop there. He then started AutoNation, which became the largest seller of used cars in America. He also founded Extended Stay America, started multiple golf clubs, and bought the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins.
His philosophy was simple: 'We made small acquisitions in different states around the United States. It was easier, faster, and cheaper to buy out a guy who was already established in a market, even if very small. Then I'd hire salespeople to go out and do the internal growth. The plan was always to have internal growth, but to get it growing quickly, it was sometimes easier to go into a market and just buy a guy who had 3-4 trucks.'"
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.