Mark: Okay, Michelle. How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. Review it in exactly five words. Michelle: Hmm. Think huge. Move fast. Problems? Delicious. Mark: Nice! Mine is: 'Rewire your brain, then buy everything.' Michelle: That pretty much sums it up. It’s a wild ride of a book. So, for anyone who hasn't heard of him, who is the guy behind this audacious title? Mark: We are diving into How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs. And what’s fascinating about Jacobs isn't just that he's a billionaire entrepreneur; it's that he's a serial one. He's started seven, now eight, billion-dollar companies in completely unrelated industries—oil, waste management, equipment rentals, and global logistics. Michelle: Wow, okay. That’s a key detail. It’s not a one-hit-wonder story. He has a repeatable playbook. Mark: Exactly. He’s not just lucky; he has a system. And that system, surprisingly, doesn't start with a spreadsheet. It starts with your brain.

Michelle: I’m glad you said that, because when I saw the title, I expected Chapter 1 to be about, I don’t know, raising venture capital or market analysis. But he starts with psychology. He says you have to "rearrange your brain." What does that even mean? Mark: It’s the core of his entire philosophy. He argues that successful people, the ones who achieve massive goals, don't just think harder; they think differently. They’ve rewired their mental operating system. The best example of this is a story from 2018 when he was running his logistics company, XPO. Michelle: Okay, lay it on me. Mark: So, XPO gets hit by a scathing report from a short-seller. The report is full of distortions, but the market doesn't care. The stock price goes into an absolute freefall—it drops 26% in a single day. His team, his investors, everyone is in panic mode. Michelle: That sounds like a complete nightmare. The kind of thing that keeps a CEO up at night for a month. Mark: Right. Conventional thinking says you go into damage control. You fight back, you reassure the market, you try to stop the bleeding. But Jacobs and his team did something else. He calls it "radical acceptance." They didn't waste energy being angry or wishing it hadn't happened. They just accepted the new reality: our stock is now incredibly cheap. Michelle: Hold on. His company is on fire, and his first thought is to go on a shopping spree for his own stock? That requires a different kind of brain. Mark: A rearranged one! He saw the problem not as a crisis, but as an asset. He describes the low share price as "mana from heaven." While his bankers and advisors were telling him it was crazy, that no company had ever done a buyback that large relative to its market cap, he pushed forward. Michelle: So what happened? Mark: He convinced his board to authorize a massive two-billion-dollar stock buyback. They executed it. A couple of years later, those shares they bought for $2 billion were worth $6 billion. A $4 billion profit, born directly from what should have been a disaster. Michelle: That's insane. It’s one thing to say "see problems as opportunities," which sounds like a motivational poster. It's another to actually bet billions on it while your company is in freefall. Mark: And that’s the rearrangement. It’s a lesson he learned from his most important mentor, a legendary commodity trader named Ludwig Jesselson. When Jacobs was a young man, he was complaining to Jesselson about all his business problems. Jesselson stopped him and said, "Brad, if you want to make money, you need to get used to problems. Business is problems. Each one is an opportunity to remove an obstacle and get closer to success." Michelle: That reframes everything. It’s not about avoiding problems; it's about becoming a world-class problem solver. The problem itself becomes the raw material for your success. Mark: Precisely. And that rewired brain is the essential tool you need to execute the next part of his playbook, which is this almost impossibly aggressive growth strategy.

Michelle: Okay, so once your brain is properly rearranged to see opportunity everywhere, what's the first move? How does he pick an industry to dominate? Mark: It’s a two-step engine. First, he becomes completely obsessive about research to identify a massive, undeniable trend—what he calls a megatrend. He says you can mess up a lot of things in business, but if you get the big trend right, you'll still do well. Michelle: What does obsessive research look like for him? Mark: It's staggering. He reads everything: trade journals, financial reports, employee reviews on recruiting sites. He attends industry conferences, not just to listen, but to hear the questions investors are asking. He talks to CEOs, bankers, venture capitalists, shareholder activists, and even journalists who cover the industry. He's trying to build a 360-degree map of the entire ecosystem. Michelle: And once he has that map and has identified the trend, what's step two? Mark: High-velocity M&A. Mergers and acquisitions. He uses acquisitions as a jet engine to scale at a speed that competitors can't comprehend. The best example is United Rentals. In 1997, he decides to get into the construction equipment rental business. Michelle: An industry I'm sure he knew nothing about beforehand. Mark: Exactly. But his research showed it was a growing, fragmented industry ripe for consolidation. The biggest player at the time, Hertz, had taken 37 years to build a billion-dollar rental business. Jacobs decided to do it faster. Michelle: How much faster? Mark: He did it in 13 months. Michelle: Come on. How is that even possible? That sounds like a recipe for implosion. Mark: Through a relentless acquisition spree. He bought up hundreds of smaller, independent rental companies. But here’s the genius move, the thing that gave him what he calls a "God mode" view of the industry. His research revealed that almost all of the larger regional players were using the same business management software, a program made by a company called Wynne Systems. Michelle: Wait, don't tell me... Mark: Oh, yes. He bought Wynne Systems. He bought the software company that powered all his major competitors. Michelle: That is brilliant and almost evil. So he instantly got access to all their data? Mark: Not their specific data, but aggregated, anonymized data on macro trends across the entire industry. He could see equipment gluts or shortages forming in different regions before anyone else. As he puts it, "We could now proactively adjust our pricing and asset management while the rest of the industry was being reactive." Michelle: Okay, that’s a game-changer. But it still sounds like an operational nightmare. How do you integrate 250 different companies, each with its own culture, without the whole thing collapsing into chaos? Mark: That’s where his rules for M&A come in. He's meticulous about it. He stresses respecting the seller, understanding their legacy, and ensuring their employees are treated well. And most importantly, he looks for cultural compatibility from the very beginning. He says you can't force-fit a culture; you have to buy companies that already have a similar DNA. Michelle: That makes sense. The strategy is only as good as the people executing it. Which I guess brings us to the human side of this empire-building.

Mark: Exactly. Once you have the mindset and the strategy, you need the team. And Jacobs is absolutely ruthless about talent. He says the most important thing a CEO does is recruit great people, and he has a very specific formula for what he looks for. Michelle: Let me guess: Ivy League, perfect resume, years of experience? Mark: Not at all. He says you have to discard any preconceived picture of the ideal candidate. He looks for four core traits: intelligence, hunger, integrity, and collegiality. He wants smart people who are driven to achieve big things, are honest, and are enjoyable to work with. A deficiency in any one of those, he says, is a risk he won't take. Michelle: Collegiality is an interesting one. You don't often hear that prioritized in such a high-stakes environment. Mark: He's huge on it. He calls it the "love vibe." He says an organization is like a party—you only want to invite people who bring the vibe up. But to get those people, the true A-players, you have to do something most companies are afraid to do. Michelle: What's that? Mark: Overpay them. He says it's nearly impossible to overpay for true talent. He argues that saving $100,000 a year on salary by hiring a B-player instead of an A-player might cost you millions in lost profits down the line. The dynamic range between an average performer and a top performer isn't 2-to-1; it can be 50- or 100-to-1. Michelle: That’s a powerful point. So he finds these A-players, pays them a fortune, and creates this great vibe. But how does he make sure the team stays at that level? Mark: With a thought experiment he calls the "resignation test." He imagines a specific employee walking into his office and quitting without warning. Then he gauges his own gut reaction. Michelle: Wow. Okay, what are the options? Mark: If his first thought is relief, like "I was going to fire this person anyway," that's a C-player who needs to be let go, compassionately but decisively. If his reaction is, "This is a pain, but we'll manage," that's a B-player. But if his internal dialogue is sheer panic—"We are so screwed, how will we ever replace them?"—that's an A-player. And you do everything in your power to keep them. Michelle: I'm getting mixed signals here. He talks about a "love vibe" and being collegial, but then he has this ruthless "resignation test" and a policy of firing all C-players. How do those two things coexist in one culture? Mark: That's the paradox, and it’s the key to his concept of a "superorganism." For Jacobs, a high-performing, positive culture requires protecting it from mediocrity. The "love" and the high pay are for the A-players who are driving the mission forward. Keeping C-players around out of a sense of false kindness is, in his view, unfair to the high-performers who have to carry their weight. Michelle: So the collegiality isn't about being nice to everyone, no matter what. It's about creating an environment where A-players can thrive together, without being dragged down. Mark: Precisely. It’s a culture that is fiercely competitive against the outside world but intensely collaborative and supportive on the inside. It's designed to kill the competition, not each other.

Mark: When you put it all together, you see it’s really a three-legged stool. First, you rewire your brain to see opportunity where others see chaos. Second, you use that clarity to spot a huge trend and deploy M&A as a jet engine for growth. And third, you fuel that engine with outrageously talented people who you pay exceptionally well. Michelle: So the big takeaway isn't just "buy a bunch of companies." It's that your mindset fundamentally dictates your strategy, and your people ultimately dictate your success. The one actionable thing that really stood out to me were those two questions he asks his entire company. Mark: Oh, the feedback questions. They're brilliant. Michelle: Yeah. "What's your single best idea to improve our company?" and "What's the stupidest thing we're doing as a company?" It feels like any leader, at any level, could start using those tomorrow and get invaluable, unfiltered intelligence. Mark: Absolutely. It cuts right through the corporate jargon and gets to the truth. And maybe the biggest question the book leaves you with is a personal one. Michelle: What's that? Mark: What's the one problem in your own life or business that you've been avoiding, that might actually be your biggest asset? Michelle: A powerful thought to end on. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.