And what it teaches us about investing differently
There is a story I keep coming back to. Not because it is glamorous — it is anything but. Not because the man at the centre of it had advantages most of us can only dream of — he did not start with many. But because of what he understood about wealth that most people spend their entire lives missing.
Wayne Huizenga started with a garbage truck. He ended with three billion dollar empires.
And the distance between those two points was not luck, or genius, or being in the right place at the right time. It was a ladder. One he climbed deliberately, intentionally, and patiently — rung by rung — until he had built something that most people would have told him was impossible from where he started.
I call it the Ladder of Leverage. And I believe every single one of us can climb it.
But First — Why This Story?
This season of Thinking Like A Wealthy Woman has been about investing differently. We have talked about betting on yourself. About knowledge as capital. About owning your work instead of just performing it. About visibility, freedom, and the courage to create what does not yet exist for you.
Today’s story looks different from the others. Wayne Huizenga was a white American man operating in 1960s Florida — a world that was significantly more structurally open to him than it has been to many of the women we have featured this season. I want to name that honestly and directly.
And I am sharing his story anyway. Deliberately. Because the framework he used does not belong to him. It does not belong to any one gender, background, generation, or starting point.
It belongs to anyone willing to climb it.
So let us climb.
The Beginning: $500 and a Garbage Truck
February 14, 1962. While most of South Florida sleeps, twenty-five year old Wayne Huizenga fires up the engine of a battered garbage truck and pulls out into the darkness for the very first route of his own business.
He is not starting from privilege. He dropped out of college. He joined the army. He came back and failed at things — more than once — in ways that did not make headlines because failure rarely does.
Then he found a local hauler willing to sell him one used truck and twenty commercial accounts. For $500.
That was it. That was the opening investment.
His days began at 3am hauling trash. By noon he would scrub the grime off, change into a suit, and hit the streets selling new accounts door to door. Morning garbage man. Afternoon salesman. He was at the bottom of the ladder — trading his time and energy directly for income.
But he did not stay there.
Level One: Sweat Leverage
Trading your time and energy for income.
This is where almost all of us begin. And there is nothing wrong with it. Sweat leverage is honest. It builds character, discipline, and a work ethic that no classroom can teach.
But sweat leverage has a ceiling. There are only so many hours in a day. Only so much energy in a body. And if you stay at level one forever — if you never stop being the one doing all the work — your income will always be limited by your physical capacity.
Wayne understood this from the beginning. He was not just hauling garbage. He was watching. Learning. Building something that would eventually not need him to drive every route.
The question for you: Where in your life are you still trading time directly for income — and what would it look like to begin investing in the next level?
Level Two: Skill Leverage
Using what you know to earn more than your time alone can produce.
Wayne was not just hustling. He was absorbing everything around him. He studied his customers. He learned what made them loyal, what made them leave, what his competitors were getting lazy about. He built a mental playbook — show up early, never miss a day, under-promise and over-deliver, know your customer better than they know themselves.
Every satisfied client meant five more introductions. Every objection he heard became data he stored and used the next time.
Within six years his company had grown from one man in one truck to twenty trucks covering two counties. He was no longer just doing the work. He was scaling his knowledge — applying what he knew to build something bigger than himself.
This is the shift that most people miss. They stay busy when they should be getting strategic. They keep doing when they should be learning. Skill leverage is the bridge between trading your time and building a system — and you cannot cross it without investing seriously in what you know.
The question for you: What knowledge do you have — or could you build — that would allow you to earn beyond the limits of your time?
Level Three: Systems Leverage
Building processes that work even when you are not working.
In 1968 Wayne’s cousin-in-law flew down from Chicago with a proposition. Let us merge. Let us build the first national garbage company.
It was risky. It meant giving up control. It meant navigating complexity at a scale Wayne had never faced before. But he saw it for what it was — the opportunity to stop thinking locally and start building something that could run without him at the centre of it.
They renamed the company Waste Management Inc. And their strategy was simple and audacious — grow by acquiring other businesses, absorbing their best systems, and applying them everywhere. A company in Ohio had a more efficient routing system — they took it. A hauler in Texas had a better maintenance cycle — they rolled it out company-wide.
By 1972 — just four years after the merger — they had acquired ninety companies. One every three days.
This is systems leverage. Building once and benefiting continuously. Creating processes, structures, and ways of operating that produce results whether or not you are in the room.
This is also where investing differently becomes most visible — because Wayne was not just building a garbage company. He was building a replication engine. And once you have a system that works, you can apply it to almost anything.The question for you: What in your work or life could be systematised — turned from something you do manually every time into something that runs reliably without your constant presence?
Level Four: Capital Leverage
Using other people’s money to grow faster than your own resources allow.
This is where Wayne flipped the game entirely.
Up until now he had been growing the old-fashioned way — using profits and whatever financing he could piece together. But that approach has limits. You run out of cash. You grow slowly. You start playing defence instead of offence.
So, he changed the rules.
Instead of paying cash for acquisitions, he started offering stock. A simple shift — but a transformative one. After Waste Management went public in 1971, Wayne used shares to buy 133 small haulers in just ten months. He was using capital to acquire revenue, which made the stock more valuable, which let him acquire even more.
Compound leverage in motion.
And he did not stop at garbage. The same capital strategy-built Blockbuster Video — which he sold to Viacom for $8.4 billion in 1994. And AutoNation — which became the largest car retailer in the United States with over $20 billion in annual revenue.
Three industries. Three empires. One framework applied again and again.
The question for you: Where could you use leverage — other people’s capital, resources, networks, or platforms — to grow faster than your own resources currently allow?
Level Five: People Leverage
Building a team that carries the vision further than you could alone.
Wayne Huizenga knew something that most entrepreneurs learn too late. You cannot scale an empire alone.
He was never afraid to hire people smarter than him. More experienced. More specialised. When Waste Management acquired a new company, he usually kept the original owner on board — because those people knew their markets better than anyone. They had relationships, knowledge, and pride in the thing they had built.
And crucially — they were shareholders. They had skin in the game. They were not just employees following instructions. They were investors in a shared vision.
This is what people leverage actually looks like. Not a magical shortcut to great talent. Awkward phone calls. Missed targets. Learning to let go of control when everything in you wants to do it yourself. And then — slowly, painfully, powerfully — discovering that when you find the right people and give them real ownership, the whole game changes.The question for you: Who in your life has knowledge, relationships, or expertise that you have not yet thought to invest in or collaborate with? And how could you create genuine shared ownership in what you are building?
Level Six: Attention Leverage
When the world notices what you have built — and that noticing becomes its own form of power.
Wayne Huizenga was never chasing fame. He was not loud or flashy. He wore an old watch. He hated buying new clothes. He had one favourite pair of boots.
But by the late 1990s attention found him anyway. Because attention is the natural byproduct of impact. When you do something remarkable enough for long enough the world cannot help but notice.
He owned three major sports teams — the Miami Dolphins, the Florida Marlins, the Florida Panthers. He once danced the Hokey Pokey in front of a crowd at a Dolphins game — a billionaire making himself human and relatable in a single ridiculous moment. Journalists came. Interviews followed. His moves began to matter in ways that created opportunities he had not even sought.
This is the hidden power of the final rung. You do not have to shout to be seen. You just have to build something real enough, for long enough, that the world starts listening on its own.The question for you: What are you building that is remarkable enough — real enough, consistent enough, valuable enough — that attention will eventually find it? And are you patient enough to keep building before it does?
The Final Ride
On his last day as CEO of Waste Management, Wayne Huizenga put on his old coveralls, climbed into a beat-up garbage truck, and drove one final route.
To remember where it all began.
After hundreds of millions of dollars. After three empires. After sports teams and IPOs and billion dollar exits. He wanted to go back to the truck. To the 3am starts. To the grime on his knuckles and the smell of diesel and the twenty accounts he had bought for $500 on a February night in South Florida.
That is the man. And that is the lesson I want to leave you with.
Wayne Huizenga did not win because he was the smartest person in the room. He was not. He did not win because he had a revolutionary idea or a prestigious education or a family fortune behind him. He had none of those things.
He won because he understood that where you start is not where you have to end. That the ladder exists. That every rung is available to anyone willing to climb it. And that the smell of garbage — the unglamorous, overlooked, nobody-wants-to-do-this starting point — is not a limitation.
It is an invitation.
Where Are You on the Ladder?
Here is what I want you to take from this story — not as a distant inspiration but as a direct and practical question.
Where are you on the ladder right now?
Because most of us are somewhere on it. Trading time for income. Building skills. Starting to think about systems. Beginning to understand leverage. And the question is never whether you are high enough. The question is whether you are climbing.
Pick your next rung. Invest in it deliberately. And do not let where you are starting from convince you of where you have to stay.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here