Brad Jacobs

If they were CEO, had they been CEO, what would they have done differently?

What if I buy this company, should I change?

Because it's not optimal.

What if I buy this company that I should definitely not change because it's really good and it's working really well?

And my list of questions are brief because I want to hear what the answers are.

And then based on listening carefully to those answers, follow-up questions.

I'm much more interested in what they want to set the agenda than what I want to set the agenda because they know the business.

I'm just learning the business.

Getting to the point where you no longer can tell that this is a company we bought three months ago versus the company that we home grew or 10 years ago we bought it and it's been with us for a decade.

You get the same look and feel, the same brand, the same IT, the same culture, the same excitement.

They're using all the same internal social media because I always like to communicate a lot through our internal social media.

It just is identical in every way.

I shouldn't say in every way because every branch, every location, every district, every region does have its own flavor.

It has its own personality because you have cultural differences in different parts of the country or in different countries.

But the general blood and guts of the business is the same.

And for me, that's the goal.

The goal is to get to the point where you have fully integrated this business on every level into the rest of the company and it's part of the family.

Listening and demonstrating sincere respectfulness.

So this is probably my most important learning in integration is not to come into an acquisition thinking I know it all and getting up there on stage and telling everyone, okay, and giving them a long speech of here's what we're going to do.

No, what I want to do is I want to come in with a very open, receptive mind to say, look, we've just paid millions and millions, in some cases, billions of dollars for this business.