Want to make a ‘few billion dollars’? Entrepreneur explains how

investmentnews.com:

Founding a billion-dollar company is a feat achieved by only the tiniest percentage of people throughout history. Repeating that accomplishment has been achieved by even fewer.

Then there’s serial Wall Street entrepreneur Brad Jacobs, who has founded seven billion- or multibillion-dollar corporations, putting him in a class by himself.

Jacobs, who founded and took public United Waste Systems, United Rentals, XPO and XPO’s two spin-offs, GXO Logistics and RXO, discusses the secrets to his string of successes in his new book, “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars.”

“The title of the book is ‘How to Make a Few Billion Dollars,’ but it’s not literally saying that,” he said. “The figurative purpose of the book is to explain how to dream big and aim big and accomplish really big things in life that can be money, but that could also be the arts, that could be parenthood, that could be anything you want.”

Jacobs certainly hasn’t locked himself into any one industry when it comes to hitting it big. He’s cashed in billion-dollar bets in oil trading, waste management and logistics, among others. To a certain extent, he believes that the similarities of businesses outweigh their differences, with the major similarity being that each business serves customers and provides a service or product that customers value more than their competitor’s offerings.

“It’s creating an environment for employees to feel great and to feel proud to be at the company and motivated to give it their all,” Jacobs said. “And most importantly, it’s about pleasing investors who give us their money and we have to give them a lot more money back than they gave us.”

It’s worth noting that Jacobs concentrates on keeping his employees happy, even more than beating