​View In Browser​

​

Basically, boring and a wee bit dirty, wins again.

Want to learn how you can find, invest in, acquire, and cashflow off boring businesses? Check out our premium crew Cashflow, where we break down a new topic EVERY month.

In November, we covered:

• How to find top performing franchises
• Due diligence questions every wanna-be franchisee must ask the franchisor
• The truth behind franchise royalty fees
• BTS of three 8-figure franchise operators

🔊 Listen to the audio version of this week's blog!

​$29 Billion Trash Empire.mp3​

Today In < 10 minutes → We’re Going to Dive Into:

1. A Contrarian Thought → The Self-Defeat Phenomenon
2. The secret to a 25 Year Old Building A Billion $ Company
3. The veteran behind the Fortune 500 waste disposal company
4. How he went from Zero to being Publicly Traded in 5 years

Contrarian Rant

The Self-defeat phenomenon.
​

Playing on the internet now for a year a niggling nagging trend has reared its ugly head again and again in my interactions. In the comments of posts, in the retweets, in the replies to emails. I've named it the self-defeat phenomenon.

Here is a truth I've come to see. Most people truly do not believe they can do big things. They do not believe that the things someone like me, or those more impressive have accomplished can be available for them. And when you tell them they really can, you create a discord like a bad note on a guitar string. The discord creates a terrible sound, a ringing screech, compared with all the notes they’ve connected in their life. And because no one wants to rewrite the song of their life to go to a higher level, you sound to them like a liar or a deceiver. Instead of a believer in their abilities.

I sat one morning wondering at this... see we had a video go pretty viral with 10.6 million views on Tik Tok. It was about vending machines, and while the comments were more positive than not, the resounding ones were NOOOOOOO, this is fake. It can't be true. I've done it and it didn't work that way!

The tough part is, I've seen the guy's financials. He'd let me peruse what he was building. Unless he cooked the books (unlikely) he was telling the truth. But the discordant sound was ringing in people's ears. Why? Because they believe if they had done it and it didn't work that way, it wasn't because they messed up. It was because it was impossible. This is called cognitive bias; I believe this and thus I will only listen to things that confirm my beliefs. It's the foundation of much that is wrong in our world today.
​

So I want to leave you with something here... can you try one for change for me this week? One simple tweak. Instead of seeing something and saying "THIS WON'T WORK, OR NOT FOR ME!" ask instead, "How could this work for me?"
​

You might just surprise yourself with what you're capable of, and what the world can offer you.

How a veteran turned America’s garbage into an 11-figure fortune.

Picture this.

It's 1962 (eek 59 years ago) and you're fresh out of the army.

You've got only a high school diploma to your name. No hard skills. And you've certainly got no money.

Anyone with a brain would first lock down a job, right?

Not this guy. Btw - arms crossed means he's serious.

Anyway, meet Harry Wayne Huizenga

If you think you haven't heard of him, you're probably wrong. He was in his 20's and I'm not sure about all of you but your ’20s are terrifying years for most people.

You’re just stepping into adulthood. You probably won’t have a clue regarding what you want out of life. Wayne wasn’t much different.

At 25, he had spent six months in the army as a reserve. Before that, he had enrolled only three semesters at a liberal arts college before dropping out. The next five years saw him hopping from odd job to odd job, trying to make ends meet.

On paper, it didn’t look like he had much going on for him. But all that changed the day after he was discharged from the army.

While he and his father were out to lunch, they ran into a high school classmate of his father’s who owned a garbage collection business. As fate would have it, he was in the market for a new manager, so he offered Wayne the job.

Keep in mind that Wayne’s grandfather was into trash hauling himself, and Wayne never wanted any part of the family business.

But despite his protests, he was hired. And his new boss assured him that it’d only be for three weeks.

Three weeks turned to three months and Wayne was still driving out to Pompano Beach every day to dispatch garbage trucks. Except now, he wasn’t indignant about the business. He was fascinated by it.

A few days later, he was reading the newspaper when he saw the ad that started it all.

‘Refuse Route for Sale. Revenue: $500 a Month’

It was at this point he remembered the words his father told him as a boy. ‘You can’t make real money working for someone else’. So he decided to get some skin in the game.

He reached out to the seller. After negotiating for some seller financing, he was able to get his first route for $0 down. Now if you follow me on Tik Tok you know EVERYONE LOVES to tell me this isn't doable. Well my dears, people have been buying businesses with zero dollars down since the 1960s. With an additional $5000 loan from his father and a single truck, Wayne had officially become a garbage collector.

How He Went From One Truck to Being Traded on the NYSE

Wayne started two trash companies in his lifetime.

The first was the South Sanitation Service which he bootstrapped from nothing. The second was Waste Management Inc which was formed when a relative convinced him to merge their garbage disposal companies.

Now, trash and NYSE aren't two words you usually see in the same sentence but it took 5 short years for WMI to IPO.

Even by tech standards, that's fast.

Which begs the question...how did Wayne pull it off?

For one thing, pure grind had a lot to do with his success. Wayne would wake up at 2 AM every day (Jeezus), hop in his garbage truck, and make his collection rounds on his routes.

Then he'd return at noon, don a suit, and head into town to score more business.

But hustle culture wasn’t all there was to Wayne’s business plan. If it was, he wouldn't have been able to build two more Fortune 1000 companies in his 50s. Which he did.

No, Wayne had a secret sauce. Something we like to call M&A - aka buying businesses. We talk about that all day long at Unconventional Acquisitions - if you're into biz buying this may tickle your little fancy.

You see, in Wayne's time, the garbage collection industry was a fragmented one. The market was filled with many small players and none of them called the shots.

Wayne had the idea that if he could buy out his competition and merge all their businesses into one, he could dominate the market.

And that’s what he did. Instead of doing startup hustle, instead of trying to dominate his competitors, he bought them.

Before he walked away from WMI in 1984, Wayne acquired 133 other garbage disposal companies.

Their trucks, accounts, resources...he made it all his.

Today, Waste Management Inc services nearly 21 million customers across three countries with 26,000 trucks and hundreds of landfills and recycling plants.

In 2020 alone, the company did $15.2B in revenue.

Hard to imagine them pulling such strong numbers if they hadn't converted their rivals.

They took these things from a dirty business...

From being listed on the Nasdaq, to hosting my personal favorite gold tournament, The Waste Management Open.

That one makes me chuckle. Golf is about as white-collar, fancy-schmancy of a sport that you can imagine. I mean look at the traditional sponsors of Golf Tournaments. Rolex, Barclays, consultants, and yes, trash collectors.

That’s Not All…

The concept of M&A is painfully simple. So much so that you might write it off as a one-trick pony.

Spoiler. It's not.

Using this same M&A strategy, Wayne was able to grow another boring business of his into billions.

By aggressively buying out local video stores, Wayne was able to open 9,000+ Blockbuster stores around the US. If we were to crunch the numbers, he was opening a new location every 16 hours.

Of course, it’s important to mention Blockbuster no longer has the shine it once used to. There's only 1 store still standing, in Bend, Oregon.

But when it was in its heyday…man, did it cashflow. In 2000 alone, the business did $5B in revenue…just by being a video store down the street.

Eventually, Wayne ended up selling Blockbuster for $8B. But not before he had consolidated his competition and milked the market for its worth.

TL;DR

As humans, we are wired to see our competition as the enemy, especially in business.

But they don’t have to be.

I mean, why go toe-to-toe with other businesses when you can convert them and use their resources to grow yours?

Question everything & buy out the competition,

Codie

The Key To Investing, From A Billionaire

I asked a friend of mine who's a successful hedge fund manager, what his one key to investing was. His answer helped inspire Contrarian Thinking. Check out this thread for our full conversation on thinking like a financially free human.

​

Want more on this framework? Stay tuned for next week's newsletter!

​

Share Contrarian Thinking, Win Cool Stuff! Now you can invite friends, family, colleagues, ANYONE to read the newsletter. When someone you refer subscribes to the Contrarian Thinking family, there are awesome prizes that await you! Taking 30 seconds to share will bring you more prizes and exclusive access to content to make your bank account grow faster. https://sparklp.co/c35522c2 facebook twitter whatsapp email PS: You have referred 0 people so far ⚡️ Powered by SparkLoop

​

How Did You Like This Weeks Email?
​😍​😐​😡​

Disclaimer – This is the “Be an adult” section. Everything mentioned above isn’t advice, just a recount of what I did. That said: This article is presented for informational purposes only. The opinions stated here are not intended to recommend any investment or provide tax advice. Neither are they an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any current or future investment vehicle managed or sponsored by Codie Ventures, LLC or its affiliates. All material presented in this newsletter is not to be regarded as investment advice, but for general informational purposes only. Day trading and investing do involve risk, so caution must always be utilized. We cannot guarantee profits or freedom from loss. You assume the entire cost and risk. You are solely responsible for making your own investment decisions. We recommend consulting with a registered investment advisor, broker-dealer, and/or financial advisor. If you choose to invest with or without seeking advice from such an advisor or entity, then any consequences resulting from your investments are your sole responsibility. By reading/sharing this newsletter or consuming our content on our other channels, you are indicating your consent and agreement to our disclaimer.