Brad Jacobs

So the multiple you get from Wall Street matters because it goes back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, where you have your cost of capital, what you can raise money at.

And to put it in more simple terms, what multiple you can raise money at.

And then you have businesses that you can buy, acquisitions that you can do at a lower multiple.

So there has to be a spread.

And when you look at all the ways that you create value, and there's dozens and dozens of levers in the business plan, that often is the most important lever.

Sometimes it's one of the top three, but the differential, the disagio between, the delta between what you can raise capital at, what the market will give you money at, and where you can deploy it at in acquisitions, that's a big value creator.

And it's very easy.

They want to make money.

It's as simple as that.

They've never bought my stock because I'm handsome or I have a full set of hair, anything like that.

They bought my stock and supported me because we created Alpha and we outdid the competition and we were a great investment, made a lot of money for investors.

And I think if the investment community understands what you're doing,

and you're truthful with them, and you tell them, as we were talking about before, the good things and the bad things going on, because it's always both.

And you can't be one of these management teams like, everything is sunny, everything is great, everything you want.

That's baloney.

It's not like that.

If you confide in your shareholders of what's worrying you and what the challenges are, and at the same time, what the opportunities are and what your vision is, and you consistently post up good numbers consistent with what you forecasted, and they should be ambitious ones, then you'll get a following up.

I'm lucky and humbled that I have a pretty big following, but I have no illusions of why that is.

Absolutely.

So sometimes I've raised too much money.