Brad Jacobs

The other types of mistakes I made earlier in my career in acquisitions were sizing up the people.

I think I've gotten better at that.

You start seeing patterns

different types of personality types, different character traits and so forth.

And that's the most important thing you can do is make sure you get fantastic talent.

First of all, I never buy a company if I don't really like the seller.

Because I've seen a correlation between how I feel about that seller and how that deal turns out one, two, three years later.

The integrity of the seller is really important to me because the company that seller has created reflects the integrity or lack thereof of the owner or of the CEO of the senior leadership team.

It reflects the work ethic.

It reflects integrity.

The amount that they are collegial and respectful and collaborative or not, I really need to like the seller.

It's very important to me that I have a personal affinity for them.

Can you define integrity?

Integrity is real simple.

It's being honest.

It's doing what you say you're going to do and being straightforward about it, not playing games.

And I like to work with people that don't require a lot of effort to figure out what do they really mean.

I like to work with people who they mean exactly what they just said.

And they say it in real simple terms.

Two, three, four years down the line, if you find bad things with the company, it's really my fault if I haven't fixed it by then.