Brad Jacobs

You can't just buy stuff.

You have to buy stuff and then integrate them and optimize them.

And that's a very important part of the value creation opportunity.

That's what I learned at XP Logistics is to, I just honed the skills and just built on the skills that we had done in the previous company.

What, having listened to this, would still surprise people about you?

I was talking to one of my investors the other day and he said he's learned more about me in the last three months because I've been on interviews and different forums.

I've been opening up a little bit about my personal life.

I've usually kept my personal life and my approach just out of it and just tried to just institutionalize myself and just be a corporate CEO and just do a real good job and deliver the numbers and get results and people will appreciate that and do it.

So I've been interviewed a bunch of times the last few months and I've taken questions like the good questions you've been asking me and I've been answering them.

Over the last year, I've looked at over 500 opportunities, mostly M&A opportunities, industries that we could consolidate, businesses we could do a lot of acquisitions in.

And I've rejected the vast majority of them.

I'm down to a very short list.

And accounting was one of the ones I looked at.

And I got to be careful because every business I have has accountants.

I don't want to say anything that annoys my auditors, but I think there's a real existential risk to accounting.

I think AI in five years, 10 years, 15 years, I don't know the timeframe, could do everything that accountants do right now.

Particularly...

the ones that are just doing individuals' personal income taxes, for example, I think that's very mechanical.

And anything that's mechanical and just process and can be formulaic, AI is going to rip that out, just do it for cheaper or for free even.

So I don't want to get into a business where technology trends are going to be my enemy.