Brad Jacobs

We have it in our own hands to either make life meaningful or just pass time until we die.

What's your single best idea to improve our company?"

and

"What's the stupidest thing we're doing as a company?"

It makes no financial sense to skimp on salary and incentives to save $100,000 a year, when hiring a second-best candidate may cost you millions of dollars in lost profit.

I imagine that person coming into my office and quitting without warning.

Just by imagining this scenario, I can immediately tell from my own inner response whether the person is an A, B, or C player.

If my first thought is, "I was going to fire this person sooner or later anyway, so no big deal and now we won't have to pay severance," that's a C p... See more

I find that slightly understaffed teams are more focused and spend less time doing redundant busywork.

Screening for superior intelligence eliminates 90 percent of all candidates, so it's the first thing I look at.

There's just no substitute for smarts.

Make your hiring choices as perfect as they can be because there are few mistakes costlier than hiring the wrong person.

An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.

The deals I've avoided have contributed more to my success than the deals I've done.

If customers see immense value in doing business with your company, they'll happily wire money from their bank accounts to yours.

While the rental industry overall was slow to computerize, the larger regional players were more tech-savvy.

By 1997, nearly all of them were running on software developed by a company called Wynne Systems.

This told me that the software was capable of managing hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment flowing on and off jobsites.

I bought Wynne... See more