Forget Musk vs Zuck. THIS is the real billionaire’s club.

Hey Contrarians,

Spoiler alert: You likely won’t invest in a unicorn startup or be the next wolf of wall street.

But you could crack your first million on Main Street.

Look around your community – what services and products keep life moving?

They’re not flashy, but they’re flushed with cash: furniture, trash pickup, a roof over your head, bolts and screws, a functioning toilet, the food you eat. Things useful decades ago and still essential now.

This is what we’re going to talk about today.

How a cohort of now-billionaires secured their bounty in the boring (and how you can cut a slice of this wealth).

Today in 10 minutes or less, you'll learn:

✔️ The billionaire club isn’t just for Wall Street

✔️ How one man started an $82B biz with $5k

✔️ The origins of the Soy Sauce King

✔️ How the billboard baron made his billions

✔️ How the richest self-made woman made it

✔️ The humble beginnings of the world’s biggest furniture maker

The billionaire club isn’t just for Wall Street

Prediction: the next wave of M&A is democratization.

Investing, buying, and selling is going to be more widely available than ever before. There will be more fractionalization, more access, and more platforms offering yields that were once only available to Wall Street elites.

Someone who’s already in this game: Percent.

Any accredited investors (aka, not institutions) can get in on the private credit scene with Percent with as little as $500.

Percent not only simplifies investment discovery, but their historical track record speaks for itself:

As of May 31:

• They’ve funded 415 deals.
• Average APY has been ~17%.
• The average investment duration has been 9 months.

I really believe in this democratization idea… Should I write a full newsletter on my theory? Reply to let me know what you think.

But for today, let's uncover 6 billionaires who also took a path less conventional to finance their fortune…

Contrarian framework: Don’t f-ing stop

Entrepreneurship is 5% timing, 5% idea, 10% talent and 80% not f'ing stopping.

You don’t fail until you completely stop going.

If startups are the hare... Boring businesses are the tortoise. There are 3 skills you need to adopt the boring business mindset:

• Patience: Like investing in a roofing biz for 40 years, patiently enduring market downturns and fluctuations… Until “suddenly” you have 800+ locations.
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• Discipline: Like taking a $5k loan to negotiate a used garbage truck, taking the truck to win over customers, taking revenue from those customers to buy out your first competitor, then taking the whole company to the top.
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• Long-term vision: Like a boy who watched his grandfather build furniture as a hobby. Who turned that hobby into a distribution company, retail store, a manufacturing giant, and the world leader of the industry.

In a world of hares… The tortoises are making generational wealth.

Today, you’re going to read about 6 men and women who didn’t f-ing stop until their empires were built.

Wayne Huizenga

How 1 man started an $82B biz w/ $5k

Huizenga grew his business the way most eventual billionaires do:

Through acquisitions.

He borrowed $5,000 from his father and convinced a rival trash hauler to sell him used trucks. With a single garbage truck and an aggressive pursuit for customers, he built Waste Management, Inc. – an entity that would eventually become a Fortune 500 company.

He purchased many independent garbage hauling companies, and by the time he retired in 1984, Waste Management was the largest waste disposal company in the United States.

Their current valuation is $82billion.

Oh, and Waste Management wasn’t Wayne’s only business. He’s also the founder of some little-known companies called Blockbuster Video and AutoNation. He was the first entrepreneur to launch three Fortune 500 businesses in his lifetime.

Pang Kang

The origins of the Soy Sauce King

What brand of soy sauce do you keep in your kitchen? Kikkoman? Well, Kang’s soy sauce company has 4x the market cap of Kikkoman.

Pang Kang is one of the richest men in China and chairman of Foshan Haitian Flavouring & Food Co., Ltd.

He was born in Foshan in 1956 and joined Foshan Sauce Shop after university. He restructured it as a limited company in ‘95 as Foshan Haitian Flavoring & Food and became a shareholder through a $60k investment.

Today, Pang owns approximately 32.6% of the company, which produces more condiments than you or I could even name – aka, over 300. His net worth was $16.5B in 2022.

A tasty example of patience, discipline, and long-term vision (as well as oyster sauce, vinegar, and bean curd).

Arte Moreno

How a billboard baron made billions

I have to go on a side tangent here:

I’ve been moderately obsessed with billboards.

They are the single cheapest traditional advertising method. Cheaper even than radio ads, while certainly reaching more eyeballs.

While cost is low for advertisers, you’d think the billboard operators would be making an awfully slim margin, no? Fortunately, the average data begs to differ:

Cashflow is my love language, so I love the looks of this chart. These numbers look even better with the tech innovation in outdoor advertising. I’ve invested in a digital billboard agency, and I’ve been looking into an LED truck billboard that drives the Vegas Strip…

Not saying I’ll hit my first billy with billboards, but I do see how possible it is.

Which brings us to the story of Arte Moreno.

Moreno grew up in Tucson and went to the University of Arizona, where he majored in marketing (important detail). He helped establish Infinity Outdoor, Inc, and as CEO, he transformed the company into a leading billboard operator in the Phoenix area.

How did he do it?

Why, though acquisitions, of course.

Specifically, horizontal acquisitions. Moreno's growth snowballed when he expanded beyond the city, strategically acquiring assets in other markets. Outdoor Systems acquired Gannett Outdoor in 1996 for $690million, making it the largest outdoor advertising company in the United States at the time.

A few years later, Moreno sold to Infinity Broadcasting for $8.3B.

Diane Hendricks

How the richest self-made woman made it

When I say she's the richest self-made woman, here’s some perspective: Taylor Swift’s net worth is just 5% of Diane Hendricks’ net worth. And now I want to know what her equivalent of “Swifties” would call themselves. (Di-fans? Die-hards? The Hendricks Hens?)

So how did D-Hizzle become so wealthy? Let’s shout it from the rooftops…

Diane, alongside her late husband Kenneth, co-founded ABC Supply in 1982 – a humble shingle supply based in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Under her leadership, ABC Supply has expanded its operations to over 800 locations in 49 states. It’s the largest roofing distributor in the United States and a leading supplier of building products to contractors and suppliers.

Thanks to her phenomenal growth of ABC, Diane Hendricks has a net worth of $15B.

Marketing sidebar: In the 1980s, the name “ABC Supply” is coming up first in the yellow pages. So smart. It’s like the ‘80s version of SEO. (My gen Z readers, you’re gonna have to tell me if you know what yellow pages are…)

Ronald Wanek

The humble beginnings of the biggest furniture maker in the world

Wanek was born to sharecropping parents and a life of hard work. At ten, his family saved up enough to buy their own farm.

But when his dad later had the “talk” with him (“so when are you going to take over the farm?”), Ron didn’t want to run the family biz.

His other family members were furniture makers, so Ronald took a job at a local cabinet business. After nine years of experience there, he wanted to expand into furniture more broadly, so he invested in a company called Arcadia Furniture.

Years later, a part-owner retired, which opened up an opportunity for a merger with another store. The other store?

A place called Ashley Furniture.

Apparently, the furniture industry is pretty cutthroat, but Ron was able to make Ashley rise above the rest by:

• Setting up production overseas
• But investing heavily in American manufacturing, too
• Expanding product line faster than anyone else
• Leveraging logistics and supply chain tech before anyone else

With one foot in retail (1,000+ stores globally) and one foot in manufacturing (the world's largest furniture manufacturer in 2009), Ron made Ashley Furniture what it is today.

Ronald’s current net worth is ~$5billion.

You can uncover billions in the unconventional

Do you notice anything all these billionaires have in common?

They're not spring chickens anymore.

They started building their empires decades ago, leveraging the power of time to create beautifully-boring billion-dollar biz’s.

“Great, so I have to wait until I’m old to have a successful business?”

Not quite the point. Here’s the truth:

These owners are all retirement age.

Think of the successful business owners from your community in unexciting sectors. How old are they? Probably 60-65.

You don’t have to build from scratch. You can buy someone else’s 10,000 hours. Cashflowing businesses are all around you – they're just the mundane ones you never think about.

You can be in the next generation of owners.

One last thing to keep in mind:

It doesn’t have to happen fast, to happen big.

Don’t be the cause, be the catalyst.
​

- Codie

😕 Sorry, mom says I can't go to the UFC fight (Side note: is Elon's mom an influencer??)

🦘 TIL: Outback's origin story... "too much authenticity might cause a disconnect"

🏢 Delaware town is combatting low voter turnout by allowing corporations to vote​

😍 Nothing more romantic than a $24,550 fine for defacing a piece of history​

🤬 Kids think swearing = adult. Adults think swearing = childish. Who's f*ing right?

Ready to become part of the Contrarian Crew?

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✔️ Enroll in our Small Business Acquisitions Course. It's like an MBA – but 1/100th of the cost and actually useful! Learn how to build freedom and income through SMB acquisitions.

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