How to Make a Few More Billion Dollars
Brad Jacobs
Greenleaf Book Group Press (December 2025)
Making that first billion can be a bit of a challenge for many people
In a book previously published book in 2023, Brad Jacobs offers advice to those who find it difficult to make a billion dollars…and do it legally, without dozens of felony convictions. I guess that’s possible but it seems unlikely, especially given the economic mutilation that medieval tariffs are causing now.
Two years later here’s a sequel in which Jacobs offers advice to those who are struggling to add another billion or two, if not more. He poses dozens of key questions — and responds to each of them — in order to explain which capabilities are essential to ultimate success.
Assume that each is prefaced by “How well can you….
o Keep your head in “a good place”
o Imagine what doesn’t exist, and then build it
o Use meditation to make sharper, smarter decisions
o Generate better ideas by thinking in different ways [from different perspectives]
o Gain a powerful advantage by maintaining emotional balance in high-stress situations
o Formulate, fine-tune, and nourish promising albeit “audacious” ideas
o Achieve success with timely persistence rather than perfection
o Think constructively. Learn to recognize your irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions as well as how to reframe them
o Always be ready to change your beliefs based on new, better information
o Use the dialectical approach (i.e., viewing something from multiple perspectives and interpreting it in different ways that cause all valid
o Not merely tolerate adversity, embrace it…especially setbacks
o Formulate a bold yet attainable strategy that results in meaningful benefits from long-term trends. Think of strategies as “hammers,” tactics as “nails.”
o Seek and locate tech-backward sectors with sizable markets hungry for efficiencies
o Fully understand and fully agree that the most consequential decision you make in business and in life is selecting those with whom you surround yourself
o Effectively affirm the value of a business that relies on the intelligent systems that streamline operations and enhance decision-making
* * *
I presume to add five to this list of Jacobs’s observations from among my personal favorites. First, from Lao-tse:
“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”
o “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African proverb
o “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.” Voltaire
o “People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Theodore Roosevelt
o “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler
o “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” Peter Drucker
o “The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” Steven Wright
* * *
Be honest now: Are you [begin italics] totally convinced [end italics] that you have the attitude, mindset, temperament, and stamina to achieve most (if not all) of these objectives?
Long ago, Henry Ford observed, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”
And Thomas Edison said, “Vision without execution is hallucination.”
It may be best to stop thinking about gaining great wealth and use what you learn from reading and then re-reading the material in How to Make a Few More Billion Dollars. Then if (a HUGE “if”) you apply the material effectively, that would be of incalculable value to your eventual success.
The greatest value of so-called “self-help books — and this is one of the best — depends almost entirely on what you do and how well you do it.