Lesson 100: Reflection

About the Searcher

God has been good to me. Writing a reflection and publishing each week taught me that a single week will not determine the rest of your life. Sometimes I stayed up late editing. Sometimes I went to bed and finished in the morning. Sometimes I worked on the draft all week.

Eventually, I let go of the pressure to publish the perfect piece. The collection of lessons is more valuable than a single edition. This helped me let go of being the perfect searcher, the perfect student, the perfect friend or the perfect son. I am a collection of roles that is more valuable together than alone. 

These 100 weeks helped me graduate from seeing myself through one lens in one moment to seeing shades of myself across time. This may be the end of my newsletter, but it is not the end of my transformation. I will continue to change, and so will you. 

Whether you realize it or not, you have changed with me. Whether you subscribed last week or started at the beginning, you are a different person. That is a good thing. We cannot remain the same. We have a duty to reflect on who we are and how we can change to solve the problems we see in the news. We cannot sit back in our biases and belittle the leaders pushing the world into a corner when we can stop it. 

You can become a solution.

You might be led toward something other than ETA. But reflecting on your own leadership capability allows your heart and soul to manifest the characteristics necessary to solve these problems that vex you.

I see this newsletter as a curriculum for myself to solve the problem I see in the world: there are not enough Black business leaders. The teacher never left. So I teach. The leader has come forth. So I lead. There is no going back. You can lead too.

About Entrepreneurship Through Acquistion

There are tens of trillions of U.S. dollars available to acquire businesses. You may not have access to any of it yet, but my prayer is that something in this newsletter could educate you on how to gather the resources to make an acquisition. 

When I began this newsletter in March 2024, I was inspired by a session about buying and growing a business. I wanted to capture what I learned in my own words. I decided to email a letter of this lesson to my friends and family so we could share in the knowledge. Each week, I weaved a syllabus and reading list together for anyone who wants to operate a business.

As I learned about operating businesses, the trillions of dollars in private capital made me think there is more capital than great operators. If I continue to learn how to become a great operator, then buying and growing a business would provide an avenue for me to build generational wealth for my family.

I owe it to my family to advance the legacy they established; they are the anchor of my history. Their spirit walks into these rooms with me while I open my notebook and write down notes to running a great business. In the classroom. On the phone. At the coffee shop. On the train. Over video call. In articles. In books. In films. In interviews. The curriculum I wrote in Nuance was no feat of my own; I was a student with my village behind me. 

As small businesses continue to employ the majority of Americans, operators have an outsized impact on the lives of our loved ones. Therefore, as operators, we must learn the craft of operating for the people who show up to work. We must keep our word and never forfeit integrity when someone else is misbehaving. We are the adults in the room responsible for building a healthy, cash-flowing business. We apply the same rigor to nurturing our employees because we cannot sustain the latter without the former.

In the end, operators are few and far between because they have no one to blame for poor outcomes in their business. Moreover, they cannot take credit for successful outcomes because it is always the team that makes a great business. Great operators obsess over creating a classroom where teammates move from good to great every single day. We build community so the team trusts one another when (not if) things go wrong. Leadership is for the people, not our own advancement.

About the Bigger Picture

The teacher never left the room along the journey. The little boy raised by 3 sensational Black women never left the room. The disciplined athlete is still waking up at 5 AM. The man who misses his father still journals. Painted across this newsletter is a mosaic capturing each nuance of my identity. 

My mission is to increase representation for Black leaders at the executive, investor, and board level. When I began Nuance, I was a solo searcher, but now I have Samuel as my partner. We will increase representation for Black leaders once we acquire a business. Together, we will uplift more Black business leaders on their journey.

My vision is to leverage my influence as a Black business leader to pursue economic justice. As more Black leaders acquire and grow great businesses, this generates wealth for our community. It inspires me to see how these lessons can lead to more wealth in households across the U.S.

My values are to act with love, humility, and wisdom. Love for the people we lead. Humility to learn from the sellers we meet. Wisdom to know that the transaction is the mechanism, but humanity is the mission.

This final newsletter is a commencement. I have graduated from seeing my reflection in a frame to seeing it as a gradient of transformation. 

It is a blessing to have shared these weeks with you. You opened your networks and shared your support. 

Finally, I would not be here without God’s grace and mercy. 

This is Lesson 100: Reflection. The End.