Huizenga

"This is one of the processes by which the number of competitors in an industry tends to decline over time, as discussed earlier. Waste Manage¬ ment, run by Huizenga and Dean Buntrock, acquired scores of local mom-and-pop operators. Increasing the scale produced operating effi¬ ciencies and improved managerial methods. In addition, and not inci¬ dentally, Waste Management told its story very effectively to stock market investors. Huizenga later applied what he had learned about growth through acquisition to a high-growth business, the Blockbuster chain of video rental stores."

"From this modest start, Huizenga built the world’s largest trashhauling business. Together with Dean Buntrock, who had married into the Huizenga clan, he founded Waste Management Technologies (now WMX). A few years earlier, Browning-Ferris Industries, led by Tom J. Fatjo Jr., had conceived the idea of creating a nationwide waste-hauling company. Buntrock and Huizenga set themselves a similar objective and a breakneck timetable, acquiring 100 companies within the first two years. Waste Management went public in 1971 with an aggregate share value of $5 million. By 1984, the company’s valuation had grown to $3 billion."

"Winning is no laughing matter to Huizenga, however. Associates report being sent back to the negotiating table 15 times or more until they emerge with terms that satisfy him. In purchasing a portable toilet busi¬ ness for $4 million, Huizenga rejected the sellers’ demand that they retain SI00,000 cash in a bank account. Unwilling to yield on the issue, which his colleagues thought too trivial to be a deal killer, he abruptly said, “Okay, boys, let’s go home.” Huizenga’s team stood up and left the room, but as he expected, the sellers did not let them get down the elevator be¬ fore conceding the point and closing the transaction.30 “A deal,” Huizenga once told an interviewer, with a smile, “it’s like chasing a girl. You work at it until she says yes.” Then the smile disappeared. “You keep putting the pressure on them. Hit ’em right between the eyes. . . .You kill ’em.”31 According to one participant in many of Blockbuster’s acquisi¬ tions, Huizenga often told reluctant sellers that delaying would only re¬ duce the eventual sales price. While they dallied, he elaborated, Blockbuster would open more stores and become a greater competitive threat.32"

"Another arrow in Huizenga’s quiver is his fierce dedication to networking. Trade associa¬ tions have been a key source of his operational innovations, as well as many acquisition opportunities. When a contract to haul manure from the Pompano Beach harness track accounted for a substantial portion of his revenues, he encouraged his father to get into the flow by buying a string of trotters.24"

"Huizenga is also a master at divining the other party’s ob¬ jectives, aside from money. For example, an entrepreneur selling out to an industry consolidator may want to stay on as chairman, even with no real duties, in order to continue having an office to go to every day.33"

"The intensity suggested by Huizenga’s work habits comes out also in his competitiveness. He once remarked that auto sales and rentals repre¬ sented a trillion-dollar market and that he only wanted his fair share: half."