Wayne Huizenga Quotes
120 Wayne Huizenga Quotes
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[On being teased about the Chevy he drove – ‘Why don’t you buy a Cadillac?’] I’m not in a Cadillac situation; when I can afford a Cadillac, I’ll buy a Cadillac.
Wayne Huizenga
[On an early pig business venture of his] That wasn’t one of our more successful ventures. It didn’t work out very well. In fact it didn’t work out at all.
Wayne Huizenga
[On borrowing money with his father’s experience of near-bankruptcy] I think we were probably more afraid than people knew. If you’re afraid and you have doubts then people don’t want to invest with you either.
Wayne Huizenga
[On buying out other truck garbage hauling businesses] Back in those days we didn’t have any cash, so we needed terms. Those were the ultimate leveraged buyouts – the seller carried the paper.
Wayne Huizenga
[On competing with Tom Fatjuo at BFI] He didn’t grow up in the business like we did. Hey, you’re better off being with us. We know the business, those guys don’t. They might know how to buy companies and they might know how to raise money on Wall Street, but they don’t know about the business.
Wayne Huizenga
Through all the years I was with Waste Management, we had to deal with Wall Street and you learn… The biggest lesson I learned is that if you say you’re going to do something, be darn sure you do it.
Wayne Huizenga
[On asking Berrard what the time was] I don’t have my watch, it’s broken. [‘Can’t you afford a new one?’] Yeah, I just haven’t had the time to go get one. [The next day on Berrard’s desk was a box with a Rolex watch replacing the Timex he’d owned]
Wayne Huizenga
The rumors kept coming and coming…
Wayne Huizenga
[On trying to convince David Cook to stay on the blockbuster board as director and founder] David, why don’t you be like Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken? You’ll always be known as the founder of the company. [David Cook refused ‘I’m getting out.’]
Wayne Huizenga
I don’t know anything about locations. So can you give me a hand?
Wayne Huizenga
You’re a franchisee of ours and you’re going to stay a franchisee of ours, period.
Wayne Huizenga
[On negotiations with Peer Pederson] This was not a friendly meal. These were not friendly telephone conversations and these were not friendly dinner meetings. I was really upset with these guys for thinking that they were going to take us head on. They’re our franchisee. And they’re going to abandon the system and fight against all the other franchisees in Blockbuster and basically try to rip the whole company apart and compete against their fellow franchisees in one market and be a Blockbuster franchisee in another market. No way.
Wayne Huizenga
[On bolstering the company’s upper management ranks in the 1990’s] We said let’s try to bring in a guy with retail background and let’s see if he can help move the needle more than we’re moving the needle.
Wayne Huizenga
[On Joe Baczko] There is no question that the styles were different but I probably would criticize myself more than Joe. Because as tough as Joe was, I’m just the opposite and more easy going. I let things get loose and people doing their own things and Joe comes in and he screws everything down. Right away, he’s not going to be a popular guy but that should be blamed more on me than on Joe because if I would have been tougher, Joe wouldn’t have had to be in that spot.
Wayne Huizenga
[On Vincent resigning in September 1992] I think you’re making a mistake. You’re going to regret it. You don’t ever want to back away from a fight.
Wayne Huizenga
I don’t want to be negative on the studio industry, but to me, I like to build things – a hundred stores, a thousand stores. [With a movie studio] the chances of having three hits next year when we had two last year, pretty skinny chance of that happening. You have two good movies next year, you lose two million and the next year you make five and at the end of ten years you’re still making 20 movies a year like you always have. So where’s the growth?
Wayne Huizenga
[To Biondi on Sumner Redstone] Sumner’s not real active, he’s up in Boston. [‘Are you kidding me? He lives in New York basically. He’s in the office everyday.’ -Biondi] Oh.
Wayne Huizenga
[During the battle for Paramount] There should have been more discussion. There should have been more of a meeting of the minds. There should have been more of a partnership. It wasn’t a big deal. It’s just something that, when you’ve made that many acquisitions and you’ve seen how people are affected when they’re selling their companies, you’re maybe a little more sensitive to some of that stuff.
Wayne Huizenga
[On being told by Tom Dooley to ‘Give the deal a chance’.] How many deals have you done? [‘I don’t know enough.’ – Tom Dooley] Well, I’ve done 800 so don’t tell me about deals.
Wayne Huizenga
You understand that if the merger actually happens, there’s not going to be anyone down there? All the management is going to leave.
Wayne Huizenga
This thing is not going to make it, the stock’s not coming back.
Wayne Huizenga
We’ve had a lot of fun over the years. We all realize things are changing and there are new faces but we’re still one big happy family. We love ya, the fun is not over. See ya later.
Wayne Huizenga
[On life after blockbuster] I must have had 30 phone calls saying how about becoming CEO of this company. I’m not looking for a job. I don’t want a job. So what we do, we’ll do as an entrepreneur and we’ll only do something that we think that we can double and double again and double again and that’s how we make money. And the challenge here… I don’t need any more money. I’ve got enough money, but the challenge is to make money. Why do you climb the mountain? Because it’s there.
Wayne Huizenga
It’s the same thing here. But if you can double every year and if your stock can double every year, let me tell you something, you’ve got a lot of people that are enthused and excited, you’ve got shareholders that are happy. You’ve got your neighbors and relatives that are happy. Everybody that is working in the company is charged and excited and they’re all making a lot of money. They’ve got such an enthusiasm about them that they just can’t wait to get up the next morning to go to work. No one has to ask them to come in on a Saturday or stay late. They want to be here. It’s what we had at Blockbuster. People made more money here in two or three years than they could have made in a lifetime anywhere else. So that’s what I get a sense of excitement about.
Wayne Huizenga
I don’t look at myself as ever doing anything. I’m always doing something with someone, whether it’s Rich Rochon of Huizenga Holdings or whether it’s Dean Buntrock at Waste Management. There was never a ‘me’. There was never an ‘I.’ There was Don Flynn, John Melk, Dean Buntrock, Larry Beck… Waste Management was never an ‘I.’ The only time it was an ‘I’ is when I bought my first truck and drove it myself. Other than that, it’s always been ‘we.’
Wayne Huizenga
[On Wall Street] Every day is a learning experience and I don’t think you ever quite figure out Wall Street. You might think you understand it but you don’t.
Wayne Huizenga
That’s part of the deal. If you believe in something you go do it. Same with sports. You make a trade for a player and some newspaper doesn’t like the trade, boom, you get blasted. You got to do what you think is best. We also got assailed when we made some of the acquisitions we made. We also got assailed when the short sellers were out there. We also got assailed for bad accounting which wasn’t bad. We got assailed for a lot of things. You make the decisions you got to make.
Wayne Huizenga
To me building a company that makes a lot of money but doesn’t give a return to its shareholders, that’s not success. There are a lot of companies like that, they do great. The companies grow every year a little bit, but the stock really never does much. I’m not happy that way…
Wayne Huizenga
We’re looking for something where we can make something happen: an industry where the competition is asleep, hasn’t taken advantage. It’s going to be hard to find another Blockbuster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have three good companies growing. The point is, we’re going to be busy.
Wayne Huizenga
I don’t want to be just a voice on the phone. I have to get to know these guys face-to-face and develop a sincere relationship. That way, if we run into problems in a deal, it doesn’t get adversarial. We trust each other and have the confidence we can work things out.
Wayne Huizenga
[On having his phone number listed in the phone book when at Blockbuster] I'm listed because, when you are in business, people who are angry should have the right to look you up and tell you so
Wayne Huizenga
[Advice to students] They have to learn before they can earn.
Wayne Huizenga
You have to make it in school… I didn’t finish college.
Wayne Huizenga
You’re going to have to work hard to make it happen. It isn’t going to come easy to you.
Wayne Huizenga
He called me in November of 86. I got to tell you about a store. I just financed a young fellow who opened a video store called ‘Blockbuster’. He said ‘Wayne this is your kind of deal’. I said ‘Video Stores’ you’ve got to be kidding. I did not own a VCR, I had never been to a video store. Never rented a video.
Wayne Huizenga
They call me a visionary, but my friend John would call me every other week, and said you’ve got to look at the store, you’ve got to look at the store. So I said okay, and I walked into Blockbuster and I said ‘Wow this is something else.’
Wayne Huizenga
They were only projections because they only had one store… We determined if those numbers were only half right, it was a heck of a business. So we bought 65% of the company.
Wayne Huizenga
Over the next six years we averaged opening a new Blockbuster store one every sixteen hours…
Wayne Huizenga
[On Blockbuster] We paid $32 million dollars for that company or that’s what the market capitalization was. And seven and a half years later we sold it for $8.5 billion dollars.
Wayne Huizenga
If there’s someone in the bottom ten percent of your company, then I think that person needs to know that they’re in that bottom ten percent. In fairness to them, I’m not looking at the company side of it, I’m looking at the employee side. I think the employee deserves to know that management thinks they’re in the bottom ten percent.
Wayne Huizenga
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