Brad Jacobs: from jazz musician to $8 billion companies

Transcript

This guy turned his bar mitzvah money into $8 billion companies. Meet Brad Jacobs. In 1979, Brad is a 23-year-old college dropout who plays jazz. All he wants is to save $100,000 and play music for the rest of his life. Then one night, the news says Exxon just made a billion dollars in three months. The headline reads, of seen profits. He knows nothing about oil, so he goes to the library and reads every book he can find. Then he takes $5,000 of leftover bar mitzvah money and starts a brokerage. He can't afford a whole tanker, so he matches buyers and sellers by phone. Oil swings day to day, but most traders still wait for a newsletter in the mail. So Brad logs every price he hears and gives clients today's price. Not last weeks. Soon, Exxon and Shell are doing deals with him. Every broker he hires feeds in more prices, so the firm keeps getting smarter. And in just four years, they're brokering $4.7 billion of oil a year. He'd plan to stop at $100,000 in play music. Now he makes that in a good week. He's hooked on business, so he sells and goes after bigger industries. In garbage, equipment, rental, and trucking, he wins the same way. By knowing more than his rivals, by his count, that's $8 billion companies. And today, the jazz dropout is worth $12.7 billion.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.