Why How to Make A Few Billion Dollars Really Doesn’t Teach You Anything #BookReview

By notoriouslysinglegirl, May 10, 2025

When something is important enough you do it even if the odds are not in your favor

Elon Musk

I picked up this book at the LAX airport “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars,” by Brad Jacob’s. Personally, your first step in making a billion dollars is not to spend 30 dollars plus tax on this book at the airport but as Brad says in his books, mistakes are sometimes part of the journey to making billions.

In the first few pages, I knew this guy was a charlatan or at the very least not telling us his “secret” to how he actually made his first billion dollars. Brad’s story is that at 23 years old he had a few thousand bucks when he started a privately owned oil brokerage company called Amerix Oil Associates. Within 4 years of starting the company he and his partners had 4.7 billion in annual brokerage volume with offices worldwide.

As I was reading this, the question that popped into my head was “how does a 23 year old know how to start and run an oil brokerage company in 1976?” And what exactly is an “oil brokerage company?”

What is an oil brokerage company?

Brad Jacob’s never really explains this or how he got involved in this business.

Let’s ask Chat GPT

Who’s your daddy?

Technically Brad started out in sales selling oil. But how does one do that at the age of 23 in 1976 with no internet.

One theory could be that he’s a “time traveler.” Of course it’s “who you know.” What we know about Brad is that he attended Bennington and North Hampton College as well as Brown University. But dropped out after studying mathematics and music in 1976. I’m not sure how math and music can open doors into selling oil?

One thing that I found peculiar regarding Brad’s story is that he doesn’t mention his family life or his father while he was growing up. In fact, he doesn’t even thank his father at all in the opening pages.

Brad’s dad is Albert Jordan Jacob’s. According to his obituary, he’s a graduate of Brown University, and spent 11 months in electrical engineering and technical training in the navy where he also was a seaman first class. He was also a serial entrepreneur and founded three successful fashion companies. So, it seems like Brad’s dad really paved the way to being an entrepreneur for Brad, yet he never mentions this in his book. Instead, Brad makes it seem like he just came up with the idea all on his own. Like it just popped into his head one day.

Brad’s story is similar to Uber founder Travis Khalanik’s story. However, Travis’s story makes more sense. Travis studied computer engineering at UCLA and dropped out his senior year in 1998 to pursue his entrepreneurial ventures which all had something to do with computers and technology: file sharing, bandwidth, and Uber. He was hanging around people who understood the future of technology.

So, with the first 50 pages of Brad Jacob’s book, I’m left scratching my head on how he came up with the concept of selling oil.

What was going on with oil in 1976?

Intuitively, it seems like Brad had some “friends” who got him involved in oil sales at a very volatile time. The story kind of reminds me of the movie The Huddsucker Proxy, where a new graduate starts working in the mailroom of a company when suddenly the CEO of the company commits suicide by jumping out of his office during a board meeting. Suddenly, the inexperienced mail room guy is appointed to CEO in order to depreciate the company. However, he comes up with the idea of creating a hula hoop and makes the company millions.

Maybe that’s what happened to Brad. I’m sure he had some Hedge fund friends who perhaps used him as a “proxy.”

A 23 year old does not make billions of dollars all on their own.

In my opinion, this book is terrible and really does not tell you “How to Make a few Billion Dollars.” Instead it spits out the same narrative as any other get rich quick book on the shelf telling people that if they want to make billions of dollars they have to “think differently!”

Duh! Of course you gotta think differently unless you’re already a billionaire because obviously thinking how you’ve been thinking or how academia has taught you to think has only gotten you to pay 30 dollars plus tax at the airport for this book that really told me nothing that I don’t already know.

Brad also goes on to tell you how to pick good leadership teams. Having worked for a pharmaceutical company and several health care organizations, Brads philosophy on hearing people’s ideas is a crock! Personally, nobody cared about my ideas. Nobody wanted to change things. And when I started my own entrepreneurial ventures I got called into my nurse manager’s office and asked to explain myself.

That’s another thing, other than working for himself since the age of 23 Brad has zero experience working for other companies!

Save your 30 bucks plus tax and invest it somewhere else.

I think “How to Make a few billion dollars ” would have been a better read if Brad was transparent on how he got into oil sales and what was actually going on in that time period.

And since I’m also a medium, Brad’s dad is not too happy with the fact that Brad did not mention him in his book! It’s sad since he opened up the way for Brad. Me thinks the two did not get along.

Although, I’d love to read a memoir written by Travis Khalanik himself about his personal “Heroes Journey.” I’m sure it would be more REAL!

Fun fact: Travis’s sister and I went to high school, swam on the same swim team and double dated to our Jr Prom.