Brad Jacobs

We automate anything we can.

But I don't buy tech companies per se, mainly because the multiples are too high.

Earlier ones taught me more lessons than my more recent ones because I messed up so many times.

I made so many mistakes in my first few dozen acquisitions.

That's where you really learn.

You learn from your mistakes.

You don't learn as much from your success.

And the main mistakes I made in the earlier acquisitions were around people and integration.

I was too slow to integrate.

Now I'm real fast when I integrate.

When I integrate now, I rip off the bandaid and I'm on one CRM, one HRS, one ERP, one dashboard, one key performance indicator metric universally throughout the system.

Everything is one, one, one, one, one.

Because you have visibility into the business and you can manage it better.

You have clear understanding of what's going on in real time.

You have your finger right on the pulse of what's going on.

And it's really important when you're leading a company, particularly when it's growing so fast,

you have the controls in place, you have the oversight, you have the governance in place.

When I was younger, I used to be concerned about the inevitable fallout when you do integration, because people whine and scream, oh, I like this, I've been using this.

And there's some temporary discomfort, but it's worth doing that.

You've got to do it really fast.