David Senra

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Brad Jacobs, QXO, XPO, United Rentals & United Waste | David Senra

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Oct 26, 2025

Guest

Brad Jacobs

Brad Jacobs, a serial entrepreneur and logistics executive, has founded eight billion-dollar companies like XPO Logistics and United Rentals. In this conversation, he shares key insights from his mentor, emphasizing the importance of recognizing long-term trends and turning problems into opportunities. Jacobs discusses the critical role of hiring top talent and maintaining a strong personal brand. He also highlights his unique approach to meditation and time management, revealing how continual learning fuels his success in consolidating fragmented industries.

02:03:15

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Episode notes

00:00 / 00:00

Prioritize The Major Trend

Get the major long-term trend right before committing to an industry.
Allocate resources only when probability-weighted future states favor your thesis.

00:00 / 00:00

Problems Are Value Opportunities

Problems are the raw material for value creation when you solve them.
Embrace incoming challenges as opportunities to increase enterprise value.

00:00 / 00:00

Hire Superlative People First

Recruit superlative people as your top CEO responsibility.
Prioritize hiring the brightest and treat talent as your primary competitive moat.

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Mentorship and the Lesson to Get the Major Trend Right

00:31 • 3min

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Why Problems Are Opportunities

03:38 • 2min

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Hiring A Players and Recruiting Superlative Talent

06:08 • 2min

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Protecting Your Long-Term Reputation

07:58 • 2min

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Finding Context Through Centering and Meditation

10:14 • 4min

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Inner Monologue, Cognitive Therapy, and Managing Negativity

14:20 • 5min

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Overcoming Perfectionism and Radical Acceptance

19:49 • 7min

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Why He Keeps Starting Companies — The Consolidation Playbook

26:34 • 8min

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CEO's Most Important Job: People, Incentives, and Culture

34:11 • 3min

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Time Spent on Talent and Visualizing 'I Quit' Scenarios

37:21 • 4min

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Screening for Brains and Superior Intelligence

41:40 • 10min

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How Brad Runs High-Intensity Monthly Operating Reviews

52:00 • 9min

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Frontline Feedback: Asking What's Smartest and Stupidest

01:00:56 • 10min

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Reading Employee Surveys and Maintaining Unfiltered Feedback

01:10:41 • 6min

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Advantages of Being Public: Talent, Branding, and Market Feedback

01:16:30 • 24min

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Brutal Time Management and WOTWOM (Waste of Time, Waste of Money)

01:40:34 • 9min

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The Power of Reading, Learning, and Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis

01:50:00 • 5min

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Incentives, Compensation Design, and Theory of Mind

01:54:40 • 7min

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Going All In: Finding Passion and Intensity of Focus

• Mentioned in 18 episodes

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars

Brad Jacobs

In *How to Make a Few Billion Dollars*, Brad Jacobs shares his mindset and strategies that have driven his remarkable success in corporate America. With over four decades of experience as a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Jacobs distills his business brilliance into a tactical road map. The book covers topics such as rearranging your mindset to achieve enormous goals, turning a healthy fear of failure to your advantage, achieving high-quality M&A without imploding, building an outrageously talented team, catalyzing electric meetings, and transforming a company into a superorganism that outcompetes others. Jacobs emphasizes the importance of humility, compassion, and accountability while pursuing the American Dream.

#340

• Mentioned in 58 episodes

The Everything Store

Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Brad Stone

The Everything Store is a revealing and definitive biography of Amazon. com and its driven founder, Jeff Bezos. The book chronicles Amazon's journey from its humble beginnings as a mail-order book seller to its transformation into a global retail and technology giant. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, providing a detailed, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. The book highlights Bezos's relentless pursuit of new markets, his innovative ventures such as the Kindle and cloud computing, and how he transformed retail in a manner comparable to Henry Ford's impact on manufacturing.

Brad Jacobs is the chairman and CEO of ⁠QXO, Inc.⁠, and the founder of eight separate billion-dollar companies including XPO Logistics, United Rentals and United Waste.

He is an entrepreneur and logistics executive widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in industrial consolidation and operational transformation. Rising to prominence from the 1980s through the 2000s, he became known for revolutionizing fragmented, labor-intensive industries through aggressive M&A and technology integration, founding eight companies and growing each into billion-dollar or multi-billion-dollar enterprises. He became a household name in business circles through his serial entrepreneurship and track record of delivering outsized returns by bringing operational sophistication to traditionally fragmented markets.

His career highlights include founding United Waste Systems (which was acquired by what is now WM), founding United Rentals and building it into the world's largest equipment rental company, founding XPO Logistics and growing it through 18 acquisitions into a top-ten global logistics provider, and most recently launching QXO to consolidate the $800 billion building products distribution sector.

Episode show notes are available at davidsenra.com.

Made possible by

Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠

HubSpot: ⁠https://hubspot.com⁠

Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/senra

Chapters

(0:00) Introduction and Setting the Tone

(0:31) Mentorship and Key Lessons from Ludwig Jesselson

(2:41) Embracing Problems as Opportunities

(6:07) The Importance of Recruiting Top Talent

(7:58) Maintaining Long-Term Reputation

(10:14) Finding Context and Centering

(19:50) Perfectionism and Cognitive Therapy

(26:29) Building Billion-Dollar Companies

(36:50) The Role of A Players in Success

(42:27) The Power of People in Business

(44:23) The Importance of Superior Intelligence

(45:54) Balancing Work and Life

(48:11) The Role of Passion in Success

(51:59) Effective Leadership and Meetings

(1:05:41) Feedback Loops and Continuous Improvement

(1:16:29) Public vs. Private Companies

(1:22:55) The Drive for Stress and Passion

(1:23:16) Learning from Other Entrepreneurs

(1:23:41) Fred Smith's Legacy and Influence

(1:29:19) The Importance of Technology in Business

(1:40:25) Time Management and CEO Responsibilities

(1:54:34) The Power of Incentives

(2:01:04) Going All In: Final Thoughts

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