Dream Big: My Key Takeaways from the Inspiring Book by Cristiane Correa

This article is based on one of my favourite books, "Dream Big" by Cristiane Correa.?

I hope you find these insights as useful as I did and can apply them to your own business and life.?

The book "Dream Big" is a book based on 3G Capital by Cristiane Correa emphasizes the importance of surrounding yourself with good people and adopting a meritocracy model. The firm 3G capital is led by Jorge Paulo Lemann, Telles, and Sicupira. 3G Capital is a Brazilian multinational investment firm that owns and holds a controlling interest in several companies, including AB InBev (Anheuser-Busch, InBev, AmBev, Grupo Modelo, SABMiller), Kraft Heinz, Burger King, Tim Hortons, ?Popeyes.

Dream Big is one of my favourite books. Some principles from the book that I particularly enjoyed are listed below.

1) Strong Team:

A strong team is essential for success, and according to Cristiane Correa, the first key is to surround yourself with good people. Jorge Paulo Lemann adopted a model called PSD (poor, smart, and driven) to build his team. They valued employees who were eager and determined to see the business succeed. The ideal profile they sought was young, intelligent, ambitious, and without previous experience. The trio believed that good professionals attract and train good professionals, so they always preferred to hire internally.

2) Meritocracy:

Meritocracy is a key principle in business management, as it values and rewards the most high-performing employees. In the case of the trio, they adopted a 20-70-10 model, where each year, the company would reward the top 20% of employees (those with the best performance), keep the next 70% (those with medium performance), and dismiss the bottom 10% (those with the worst performance). For the company's big dream to become a reality, it was necessary to bring in new, talented individuals, and this meant letting go of some employees as well.

3) Simplicity and informality:

These were key principles for the trio. They focused on what was essential to the business and avoided unnecessary luxuries such as fancy cars and private jets. Simplicity was the norm, and they preferred to work in jeans and carry backpacks. The focus was on relentlessly seeking cost savings to increase profits, and this is how they impressed the market and shareholders. According to Beto Sicupira, costs are like nails; they must always be trimmed. This standard is applied to all the businesses managed by the trio and is closely monitored. They also believed that less hierarchy would make the business faster and less bureaucratic, so they eliminated private offices and created a large open workspace where people shared tables.

4) Copy what works:?

One of the mottos adopted by the trio is: "Do not reinvent the wheel." They believe that people should not be afraid to copy what works. For example, they implemented the 20-70-10 model, which was first implemented at General Electric (GE). When they bought Lojas Americanas, they visited Walmart and applied the good practices they saw there to their own companies. This approach has been present in their careers from the beginning, as they copied the best practices of American Goldman Sachs for their own bank, Garantia.

5) Taking Risks:

They believed that taking risks is essential for achieving extraordinary results. When they decided to buy Budweiser, even though the deal involved over $50 billion of potential penalties. Lemann has said that the biggest risk is not taking risks at all.

6) Continuous Growth:

The trio has a never-stop-growing culture. According to them, we should never leave too much money stopped, we always have to apply it for business growth. According to Marcel Telles, continued growth is necessary to enable employee growth.

I hope you enjoyed reading the book summary and key takeaways. This book is a must-read for anyone currently running a business and trying to scale it!?

Happy Reading!