Narrator: Imagine your company’s stock price plummets 26 percent in a single day. A short-seller has just released a scathing report, and panic is spreading through the market. For most leaders, this would be a moment of crisis management, damage control, and defensive posturing. But for Brad Jacobs, it was an opportunity. Instead of panicking, his team at XPO Logistics radically accepted the new reality, analyzed the report’s distortions, and made a stunningly bold move: they authorized a two-billion-dollar stock buyback. A few years later, that investment was worth six billion dollars, netting a four-billion-dollar profit. This is not conventional thinking. It’s the kind of counterintuitive, high-conviction decision-making that serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs details in his book, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. Having built seven billion-dollar or multi-billion-dollar companies, Jacobs provides a blueprint for achieving extraordinary results by first transforming the way you think.

Narrator: Before any strategy is deployed or any deal is made, Jacobs argues that the most critical work happens inside the leader's mind. Success in turbulent environments requires a fundamental rewiring of one's thinking. He calls this "rearranging your brain." This isn't just about positive thinking; it's a collection of mental models for processing reality, neutralizing conflict, and making high-stakes decisions.

One of his most powerful techniques is what he calls "throwing love vibes." He illustrates this with a story from his daughter's wedding in Mexico. As the officiant, he led the guests in a thought experiment, asking them to visualize all the love that has ever existed and to metaphorically toss it at the bride and groom. The result was an overwhelming feeling of joy. Jacobs explains that this isn't just a sentimental exercise; love is an expansive emotional state that neutralizes conflict and improves decision-making. In a tense business meeting, he will recall that feeling to de-escalate stress and guide the team to a better, more collaborative place.

This mental reframing also applies to challenges. During a lunch early in his career, Jacobs complained about his problems to the legendary commodity trader Ludwig Jesselson. Jesselson’s response was transformative. He told Jacobs that business is problems. Embracing them, even enjoying them, is the key, because every problem is an opportunity to remove an obstacle and get closer to success. This mindset shifts problems from being burdens to being assets—the raw material for value creation.

Narrator: According to Jacobs, you can make a lot of mistakes in business and still succeed as long as you get the big trend right. Throughout his career, his biggest wins have come from identifying a powerful, unstoppable wave and positioning his companies to ride it. The most dominant megatrend of our time, he asserts, is technology and automation.

His first company, Amerex Oil Associates, was founded in 1979 when the global oil market was information-starved. Pricing data was fragmented and slow to travel. Jacobs built a proprietary IT system to share real-time data with his brokers globally, giving them an enormous competitive edge. Later, with United Waste Systems, he capitalized on the trend of tech-based truck routing, using software to optimize collection routes and dramatically increase profit margins.

More recently, his logistics company XPO was built entirely on the premise of automating a traditionally analog industry. He hired a chief information officer with a master's in machine learning and gave him a simple, powerful directive: "Automate everything you can." This led to a digitally enabled transportation network that transformed the brokerage model. Conversely, Jacobs points to the cautionary tale of Chegg, the educational services company. In 2023, its stock fell 47 percent in one day after its CEO acknowledged that ChatGPT was a potential threat to its growth. The market understood that fighting the AI trend is a losing battle. The lesson is clear: identify the direction the world is moving and get there first.

Narrator: For Jacobs, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the fastest way to scale a business, professionalize operations, and gain market dominance. He has led approximately 500 M&A deals, building a repeatable system for doing them quickly and effectively without imploding the company. A core principle is that the rationale for any deal must hold up even in a downside scenario. If a deal only looks good in the best-case scenario, it’s too risky.

However, the most crucial element is often the human one. Jacobs emphasizes the importance of respecting the seller and understanding their motivations, which often go beyond money to include their legacy and the well-being of their employees. He also warns against the dangers of ego. He tells the story of having lunch with the CEO of Hertz after United Rentals had surpassed them as the world's largest equipment rental company. The CEO was furious, complaining that Jacobs had ruined his tagline of being the biggest. His ego prevented him from seeing the market clearly and competing effectively. In contrast, Jacobs's approach is to remain objective, focusing only on whether a deal creates value for shareholders.

This system also requires a deep understanding of culture. Jacobs learned the hard way that you can't force-fit a culture. He once bought a company from an owner who signed a non-compete agreement, only to have the owner's daughter open a competing business right down the street. While not illegal, it was an ethical breach that signaled a cultural mismatch. Now, he prioritizes buying companies with compatible cultures to ensure a smoother integration.

Narrator: Jacobs views a great company as a "superorganism," a concept he borrows from biology. An ant colony, for example, functions as a single, intelligent entity because its members communicate and collaborate seamlessly. To build a corporate superorganism, you need two things: an outrageously talented team and a culture of radical transparency and communication.

Hiring is the most important job of a CEO. Jacobs filters candidates for four essential traits: intelligence, hunger, integrity, and collegiality. A deficiency in any one is a deal-breaker. To identify top talent, he uses a simple thought experiment: if an employee announced they were quitting, would he be panicked, merely okay with it, or relieved? A-players are the ones whose departure would cause panic.

Once you have the right people, you must "over-communicate" to align them. At XPO, Jacobs sent out frequent communications to the entire team, sharing news, expressing gratitude, and asking for input. He believes criticism from employees isn't dirty laundry—it's gold. By creating feedback loops and acting on them, he demonstrates that leadership is listening, which builds the trust necessary for a superorganism to thrive. Finally, he believes in "overpaying" his people with incentive structures that align their financial success with the company's, turning employees into partners in value creation.

Narrator: Most corporate meetings are predictable, boring, and a waste of time. Jacobs believes meetings should be "electric"—unpredictable, engaging, and productive. His philosophy was shaped by his college experience. He thrived at Bennington College, with its small, discussion-based classes, but felt disconnected and uninspired in the large, impersonal lecture halls of Brown University. He applies the Bennington model to his companies.

Electric meetings have three ingredients: the right people, a crowdsourced agenda, and an atmosphere of respectful disagreement. He keeps meetings small and insists on a few iron-clad rules: no devices, no side conversations, and give the speaker your full attention. He once banned his own chief customer officer from all operating reviews for a year for repeatedly holding side conversations. The message was clear: respect for the process is non-negotiable.

Instead of a top-down agenda, his team crowdsources topics by asking attendees for their key takeaways and questions in advance. This ensures the discussion focuses on what truly matters to the people on the ground. The goal is to get to the "real deal" and avoid spin, creating a forum where problems are solved and real progress is made.

Narrator: The central takeaway from How to Make a Few Billion Dollars is that monumental success is not the result of a single stroke of genius, but of a disciplined, repeatable system. It is a system founded on a rearranged brain capable of radical acceptance and expansive thinking; a strategic commitment to identifying and leveraging unstoppable technological trends; and a relentless operational focus on building unified teams of A-players who can execute with speed and integrity.

In the book's conclusion, Jacobs grounds these lofty ideas in a simple, powerful story about his HVAC technician, Steve. Steve left a large company to start his own business because he was passionate about customer service and taking pride in his work. He embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that Jacobs believes is the engine of the free market. The book is a guide for building billion-dollar enterprises, but its most challenging idea is also its most accessible: what unmet need can you fill? Whether you are fixing an air conditioner or building a global logistics empire, the path to creating value begins with that simple question and the willingness to work tirelessly to answer it.