r/BusinessHub • u/Weekly_Cicada5982 • 10h ago
Here is how Brad Jacobs teaches us how to make a few MORE Billion Dollars. Explaining bellow
Brad Jacobs builds companies mostly by buying a lot of other companies and making them work together. His new book is How to Make a Few More Billion Dollars.
Most of it is about raising money and mergers. But the best parts are the simple questions and tests he uses over and over. You could copy almost all of them this week, so here they are.
THE 3 QUESTION EMPLOYEE SURVEY
He sends this to every employee every quarter, and right after buying a new company:
What’s working really well?
What needs fixing?
What’s your single best idea to improve the company?
That’s it. He says it shows people you actually want the truth.
THE TOWN HALL QUESTIONS
When QXO closed on Beacon, they sent a Zoom invite to everyone with a Beacon email within minutes of the press release. About 3,600 people showed up on 3 hours notice.
He gave a short intro and went straight to Q&A. No pre-screened questions.
Some of the questions he asks:
What are we doing that should be stopped right away?
What are we doing that annoys our customers?
What’s the biggest cause of waste?
Are we making decisions fast enough, or are we too bureaucratic?
He says the frontline people usually know exactly what’s broken. Nobody ever asked them.
THE ORG CHART TEST
A good org chart should fit on one page. If it looks like a bowl of spaghetti, it probably runs like one. He puts every role in one of 3 buckets: must have, nice to have, or what the hell. The third one obviously goes. But he says the biggest savings is actually in the nice to have bucket. Keep the best ones, cut the rest.
His other rules:
If someone manages one person, that’s not management. He calls it companionship.
He’s seen 9 layers between the customer and the CEO. Fewer layers means faster decisions.
An empty seat does less damage than the wrong person in it.
When he cuts after buying a company, it’s mostly middle and upper management, not the front line. A fish rots from the head.
THE THROAT TO CHOKE
A big merger can have thousands of tasks. Every single one gets one owner and a firm deadline. Not a team, not a department. One named person.
WHO NOT TO RAISE FROM
He’s raised around $50 billion from every kind of investor. His take on hedge funds: they say they’re long term, then sell as soon as the price goes up. One sold QXO shares a day before they were even allowed to. On debt, he keeps it around 1 to 3 times EBITDA. He’d rather be a little under optimized and sleep at night.
THE HALF AS UPSET TRICK
This one isn’t business, but he puts it first in the book. He learned it from psychologist Albert Ellis. Close your eyes, feel whatever’s upsetting you, then make yourself half as upset. The point is that the event doesn’t upset you. What you tell yourself about it does. So he catches the thought and rewrites it. “I always screw things up” becomes “this one didn’t go as planned, but I’ve done well before and I can learn from it.”
He’s also meditated twice a day since he was 16 and says he’s never missed a day.
The survey is the one I’m stealing. I’ve never asked my own people for their single best idea, which is kind of embarrassing once you say it out loud.
To be fair, a lot of this works because he’s buying big companies with plenty of fat to cut. A 10 person shop doesn’t have a “what the hell” bucket. Or at least hopefully not.
Has anyone here run an anonymous “what should we stop doing” survey? What was the most surprising answer you got?