How to Make a Few Billion Dollars

An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.

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

Here are some of the specific questions my team and I answer as thoroughly as possible before we contact a prospective seller:

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

A customer relationship is like any other relationship—for it to succeed, you have to be clear about how much you value it, and continually work on improving it.

And here’s another thing to remember when you get frustrated by a disordered day in the C-suite. Entropy, a measure of disorder, increases with time. Your high school physics teacher probably explained that entropy is why metal rusts, ice cubes melt, and milk spoils. For the purpose of this discussion, you can expect that problems, by nature, will

first or second meeting with a seller often goes something like this: “This is what we’re prepared to pay for your business, on these terms. If this is acceptable, we can be signing a definitive agreement in two weeks.”

obscene profits.

I’m not suggesting you can daydream your way to huge success. But 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.