Mis Notas en: How to Make a Few Billion Dollars

Brad Jacobs

Decidí empezar a publicar las notas de algunos libros que he leído, no lo haré constante o con algún tiempo en específico, pero espero le sirva a alguien. 👊

No hay mejor libro para empezar con estas notas que Brad Jacobs, una de las pocas personas en el mundo que no ha creado una, sino varias empresas con valuaciones mayor a un billón de dólares.

“You can mess up many things in business and still do well as long as you get the big trend right.”

Perdonén que las notas están en inglés, las publicare conforme el idioma que lo leí.

---

About Brad Jacobs

• Brad has multiple public companies (All of them started as one big company but decided to make them spin-offs)

  • GXO, the largest pure-play contract logistics provider in the world

  • RXO, the leading freight brokerage platform that runs tech in-house

  • XPO is primarily an LTL transportation provider.

• He's the chairman of three companies, each with a strong CEO.

Logistics industry

• 96% of loads tendered by RXO have a digital component, many of which are touchless transactions through direct digital connections with customer systems.

• One of the fastest-growing industries shortly is autonomous freight transportation and warehouse operations.

• The most significant trend in logistics is that the industry will become increasingly automated.

  • Shippers already communicate with carriers electronically; soon, there will be no human intervention.

  • AI-driven software already dominates route planning, and that tech will only become more nimble over time.

  • 3D printers will fulfill digital orders through on-demand manufacturing.

  • Autonomous vehicles will move the majority of transported goods.

Personal Mindset

• Achieving big goals

  • You need to rearrange your brain to prevail at achieving big goals during turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails. It would be best if you learned to think differently.

  • If you want to earn huge, you need to think huge. Your goals should be more significant than what you currently believe you can accomplish because that can help you achieve those goals.

  • Success comes from keeping your head in a good and right place

    • Daydream your way to massive success.

      • If you want to see problems and opportunities differently, you’ve got to push yourself.

      • Thought experiments can help rearrange your brain in specific ways so that your mind can go anywhere it needs to go and feel comfortable wherever it ends up.

• Failure

  • We tend to catastrophize something that isn't that bad.

  • I don’t take it for granted that I will be successful. Unexpected stuff can happen at any time. A healthy fear of failure has kept me sharp.

• Mindfulness

  • When my energy is low, my favorite technique to rejuvenate and unleash creativity is to close my eyes and allow my attention to float gently in my brain.

  • If you plan to make a few billion dollars, you’ll likely find that sleep is overrated—and that it’s more fun to be awake.

    • When feeling anxious about something, ask yourself:

      • What’s the worst that can happen, and how would I cope?

      • If a friend had a similar worry, how would I advise them to handle it?

Founding companies

• How to make a few billion dollars

  • Work on industries ripe for consolidation

  • Acquisitions are the best way to scale up fast and gain advantages from many locations and a more significant market share.

• “You can mess up many things in business and still do well as long as you get the big trend right.”

• Finding what to focus

  • You need to get the major trend right for the future

    • If you get the market right, you can make many mistakes and succeed.

  • Problems are an asset—not something to avoid but to run toward.

    • Big ambitions often beget even more significant problems.

  • Scalable industries

    • Envision how this business can go from making a few million dollars to tens of billions of dollars (what's the path to that)

    • Will you grow through economies of scale, M&A, or organic growth?

• Focus to succeed

  • You must focus on the most important dreams and tune out everything else.

• Researching an industry

  • Educate yourself on the industry as thoroughly as possible

  • Compile a list of questions that matter

  • Get in front of experts for each topic

Merge & Acquisitions

• Multiples

  • Buy businesses at profit multiples lower than the multiple our stock (or private valuation) trades at

• Rational

  • A great M&A should drive value proposition and company value over the next five or ten years.

    • Use ten years of earnings at zero growth as a baseline to analyze if it makes sense.

  • Only acquire companies where you can get significant, solvable, and potentially profitable problems.

• Consultants

  • Only hire consultants for M&A when the value they can add is 10x the fee.

• Implementation

  • Put together an integration playbook (action points about human and operations)

• Negotiation

  • Don't play hard to get, it's better to let sellers know how excited you are to bring them onboard.

Hiring & Building teams

• Profile

  • They should have a burning desire to win and play fairly.

  • They should enjoy an intense, results-oriented workplace culture and can work hard.

  • Take time to find the right person rather than hire someone you're unsure about.

    • An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit

• Compensation

  • Overcompensate on results and pay average base salaries.

  • They want to work for us because we allow them to run hard at ambitious goals and reap significant rewards.

• Qualities

  • Make sure they can think dialectically (thinking from multiple perspectives and reconciling streams of information that seem to flow in different directions)

  • Are they capable of changing their opinion? Rigid thinkers, at any level of intelligence, are less valuable to the team because they’re mired in their own points of view.

  • Hungry people have tenacity and want to work hard.

    • They get motivated by big projects and work nights and weekends, whatever it takes to succeed.

    • They’re resilient and don’t give up when problems emerge.

• Culture

  • It's so easy to make a lot of money (and value) with a team in the "love" vibe.

Leading companies

• Single-threaded leadership

  • Assign tasks to individuals, not working groups; this will increase accountability.

---