Brad Jacobs has built several companies worth over a billion dollars each.
While there is no “playbook” for growing a business, he focuses on a few factors above all else in every company he operates, and in this conversation, he reveals them all.
We discuss how to read anyone during an interview through intentional questions, the exciting role of AI and technology in the future of business, and where money-making ideas hide in companies.
Jacobs also shares how his training in math and music made him a better business operator, the one thing he focuses on to grow his businesses, how to spot big trends before everyone else, and the only thing a company should focus on for success.
Available now: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript
Brad Jacobs has started seven companies from scratch and led each to become a billion-dollar or multibillion-dollar enterprise. These include publicly traded companies, such as XPO Logistics, where he still serves as chairman, United Rentals, and United Waste Systems. Before starting XPO in 2011, Jacobs founded United Rentals in 1997 and led the company as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In 1989, he founded United Waste Systems.
Here are a few highlights from the episode:
In business, you can mess up a lot of things, but if you get the main trend right, you’re going to make a lot of money. And conversely, if you don’t get the main trend right, you’re swimming upstream.
How you end a meeting makes a big difference in how that person leaves the meeting.
The only time in my life that I was really depressed was in the mid-2000s, when I had stepped down from being CEO of this big company, United Rentals, and I didn’t have anything to do.
The single most powerful thing you can do in a relationship, whether it’s personal or professional, is to give someone 100% of your attention.
An element of electric meetings is that everyone in the meeting shuts off all their devices and concentrates, concentrates nonjudgmentally, on the one person who’s speaking. No side conversations; no talking over each other.
Companies don’t go bankrupt unless they have too much debt.
Org charts should be simple. They should be elegant. They should be geometrical. If you can find something [on an org chart] that’s messed up and easy to un-mess up, booyah, there’s your money.
How you end a meeting makes a big difference in how that person leaves the meeting.
I want people in my company who are absolutely motivated by money and who are raw capitalists.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:13 – The future of AI
03:50 – How to think rationally
05:17 – The major trend
07:26 – The research process
09:58 – On asking better questions
16:04 – On rearranging your brain
18:52 – On music, math, simplicity, and business
28:55 – Leverage, debt, and optionality
31:40 – What it takes to take contrarian bets
37:14 – Confidence and parents
46:50 – Why negative-only feedback is detrimental for employees
52:43 – Money lessons
54:42 – A deep dive on M&A (Jacobs’ secret sauce to growing his companies)
01:04:20 – Questions to immediately get to know anyone
01:07:43 – On boards and board meetings
01:13:26 – On decision-making
01:20:06 – The role of capital markets
01:22:10 – The type of person you don’t want to hire
01:27:45 – The best capital allocators
01:30:22 – Biggest lesson Jacobs learned from the past year
01:33:49 – On success