Lesson 82: Visibility
About the Searcher
This week, I was selected as one the Polsky Center’s Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Fellows. The fellowship offers resources, coaching, and networking opportunities for students pursuing ETA.
As accomplished as I feel about ETA Fellows, CEO’s do not become great based on past titles - they press on toward the goal ahead. My goal is to be an effective operator. The ETA Fellows program is an invaluable step in my development as an operator. As an operator, a hallmark of my strengths will be visibility. Visibility is not just about being seen; it's about seeing others. When you walk the halls, talk to employees, and listen to customers, you’re not just showing up—you’re signaling respect for your people and the work they do. This is critical, especially when you consider the biggest costs in a business.
About Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
ETA places first-time CEOs in great businesses, and operators who respect their people excel. My research on the Career and Technical Education industry revealed “staff time and benefits account for roughly 80 percent of education costs.” This statistic comes from the research paper “Incremental Costs in Career and Technical Education” by the Career & Technical Education Research Network. They analyzed both the budget and time required to train a student. These are the major categories of the incremental costs:
Understanding the incremental cost of CTE helps reveal the marginal cost of educating one more student. Lowering marginal cost benefits the organization and its people, especially when the largest cost according to this study is “staff time and benefits.” There is a direct link between how you manage your people and the financial health of the business.
Given this analysis, the missing cost of not being visible is missing early warning signs of equipment issues, staff burnout, or process inefficiencies that multiply these incremental costs. Leadership that notices hard work better retains (and recruits) talent. Understanding these cost structures as a future operator means recognizing that visibility is not just good leadership—it is financial stewardship. When 80% of costs are people-related, every conversation in the hallway, every check-in with frontline staff, every moment spent understanding operational challenges directly impacts your largest expense line.
About the Bigger Picture
My vision is to leverage my influence as a Black business leader to pursue economic justice. This vision is only possible if my Search generates economic success. Mastering visibility as an operator will drive retention, productivity and cost management. My core motivation is the economic success of this Search to amplify my impact on my community. The research of cost structure analysis and an ETA Fellowship help me press toward this goal of being a great operator. My core motivation is to achieve economic success, and I know that great operators earn that success by being visible for their people, which in turn helps generate strong financial returns, which earns me opportunities to pursue economic justice.
This is Lesson 82: Visibility. Next week is Lesson 83: Strengths.
