Roads To Success 4.6

An Unknown Element

Wayne Huizenga, Jr. was happy in marriage and had worked his way up through the ranks of Blockbuster Video, and then continued that upward movement in his father’s new conglomerate, Republic Services.  As perfect as life appeared on the surface there was still something missing, and at the time, Wayne, Jr. wasn’t even completely aware of it.

Wayne, Jr. eventually became a vice president at Huizenga Holdings.  Even though he had shown great focus in obtaining the goal of working with his father, his new executive position revealed that this focus did not necessarily transfer into all areas of business.

Bill Pierce, Chief Financial Officer for Dolphins Enterprises, was a senior executive in the company at the time and served as a mentor to Wayne, Jr.  “Like his father, he had great ideas, and he was very, very quick,” Bill said.  “But clearly, he lacked the focus necessary to be successful in business.  While he had a great business mind I would say he didn’t focus to the extent that he could stay with one project to see it all the way through.”

Wayne, Jr.’s focus was somewhat blurry in his personal life as well.  He had purchased Blockbuster stock while the company was still very young, and that stock’s value had risen astronomically.  Wayne and Fonda were living a life that most people can only dream of.

“We were incredibly happy living a life that was beyond anything that either of us had ever imagined,” Wayne, Jr. said in his I Am Second video interview.

Wayne, Jr.’s mother told her son that there “wasn’t much reality” to his life.  “She’d come to me and say, ‘Junior, you know, you need to get back to the church.  You’ve got two children now, three and four years old.  They don’t know anything about who the Lord is and they have no grounding.  And the lifestyle that you’re living, it’s not like the rest of the world lives’.”

“He loved to take big trips and take all his friends,” recalled Carlos Vidueira, a Vice President at Huizenga Holdings.  “He’d pack them up and go to exotic parts of the world.”

“There were no limits.  There were no boundaries.  There were no standards,” Fonda explained.

“My impression of Wayne was that he was a very good person, a warm-hearted person,” recalled Carlos Vidueira.  “But when you pack up twenty-five adults and take them to the Caribbean or other exotic parts of the world it doesn’t always go according to plan.  People get into disagreements.  People drink too much.”

In spite of his lavish lifestyle, something was missing.  There was an unknown element absent from the Huizenga family’s lives, and Wayne, Jr. knew it.

“I was happy in my life,” Wayne, Jr. remembered.  “I had everything the world would consider everything you should have – jet planes, yachts, a big house, and a wonderful family.  But I never really felt fulfilled.”

It took some time but eventually Wayne, Jr. began to get his bearings.  It happened gradually and in an unexpected way, and it really began with a submarine voyage.

© 2012 Philip Kassel