Lesson 98: Answers
About the Searcher
In high school, I took Dr. Harrow’s calculus class. As he drew numbers and letters and symbols on the whiteboard, he asked his students follow up questions. I thought we were supposed to ask the questions since he knew all the answers. However, his questions helped me engage with the problem. I learned to think for myself rather than wait for him to give me the answer.
Dr. Harrow not only taught me that a derivative measures the instantaneous rate of change, but he also taught me how leaders teach their team to think. How terrible would it be if I did all the thinking in a business? I would become a bottleneck for decisions. Moreover, smart and creative teammates would leave for a place where their ideas are appreciated. Dr. Harrow’s approach engaged me as a learner so I could implement ideas on my own.
About Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
Dr. Harrow’s class also engaged me because I love numbers. For the next 2 years, there are several numbers I need to track. This week, I focused on the Searcher Budget. If I am 1 year into the search, how do I know if I have spent too much money? How do I know if I have spent too little? There is no right answer. That feels frustrating and sometimes intimidating because I do not want to get this wrong.
In Search, there are no right answers. You have to make the best decision with the information available. For example, here is an example budget for a 2-year Search fund:
Illustrative Purposes Only
This week, I thought through how I would allocate this total over two years and broke it down into categories. Searcher Salary pays for personal expenses. Travel & Business Expenses pays for trips to conferences and renting office space. Software pays for subscriptions to build a tech stack. Formation pays for an attorney to incorporate the business and produce legal documents for you and your investors. As I tracked expenses, I was reminded of Dr. Harrow’s class because I had to think for myself. Although there is no “right” answer for whether $140,000 is too much or too little to spend on salary, I leaned on my partner, Samuel, to think through what are the benefits and drawbacks of our budget. Together, we developed an answer that felt right for us.
About the Bigger Picture
My mission is to increase representation for Black leaders at the executive, investor, and board level. Taking on each of these roles in a business will not mean I have all the answers. That will never be true. However, I am ultimately responsible for asking questions of my team to craft answers to the many questions business leaders need to answer each day. As Black business leaders increase in number, we ask engaging questions, like Dr. Harrow, to strengthen the next generation of small businesses.
This is Lesson 98: Answers. Next week is Lesson 99: Quitting.
