Will Acuff on Entrepreneurship & Underestimated Nashvillians
Will Acuff is a born and raised pastor’s kid and has long had a servant’s heart. More than a decade ago while on a mission trip to Kenya, Will felt called to return home to Nashville and think critically about how to best love his neighbors. Will and his wife, Tiffany, founded Corner to Corner in 2011 to help underestimated Nashvillians increase their economic participation through business and entrepreneurship. Providing education, tools and networking, Corner to Corner has helped over a thousands of entrepreneurs since its creation.
About Will Acuff
Corner to Corner was founded by Will and Tiffany Acuff in 2011. Compelled by the invitation of Jesus to ‘love our neighbors as we love ourselves,’ Will and Tiffany sought to create a relationship-centered nonprofit that focused on seeing neighbors flourish on their own terms. At Corner to Corner, that love of neighbor takes the form of educational and economic equity, creating a city where all can thrive.
In partnership with the community, the first program was aimed at equipping the justice-involved with the necessary skills to gain meaningful employment. Since those early days, Corner to Corner has grown and expanded programming throughout Middle Tennessee, all in meaningful partnership with neighbors.
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Spencer 00:06
Will Acuff welcome to signature required.
Will Acuff 00:07
Thank you so much for having me.
Spencer 00:08
Will Acuff is a born and raised pastors kid and has long had a servant heart. More than a decade ago while on a mission trip to Kenya, will felt called to return home to Nashville and think critically about how to best love his neighbors. Will and his wife Tiffany founded corner to corner in 2011 to help underestimated Nashvillians increase their economic participation through business and entrepreneurship. Tiffany and will live in East Nashville with their two children already will. We're going to have a lot to talk about, entrepreneurship, economic participation. These are my heart languages. There we go. I'm looking forward to this. One thing that we love to do is take a look at your background and your story and assemble five facts kind of about you. And the things that you do read these five facts, you don't know what we've pulled and you get to talk to us a little bit anything. Yeah.
Will Acuff 01:00
I want to see if all five of them are true or just what the internet says. Immediate. Go on.
Spencer 01:07
Yeah, this would be fun. Yeah. It's like four truths and a lie 100% okay, all right. So here are the things that we picked out. You're going to get to talk about one of these things that you want to particularly highlight. Okay, so five things to know about you and corner to corner, we learned a median black family has 1/10 the wealth of a median white family with a higher rate of downward mobility. Heavy one to start, okay, second in 2023, corner to corner, entrepreneurs generated $27.9 million to put back into the economy right here in Nashville. Number three, to date, corner to corner has graduated more than 1200 entrepreneurs from their 10 week academy program. Number 480, 8% of the academy community is made up of black women, and five 70% of corner to corner funding comes from grants, and 30% comes from donations. Total annual revenue is just over 2.5 million. Yep.
Will Acuff 02:13
All those are true. All right, nailed it on the fact checking, yeah, yeah,
Spencer 02:17
Okay, that would have been awkward right out of the gate. So hearing those things, I find each one of those fascinating. Maybe we'll get to two of them. But what of those five stands out to you the most? To introduce yourself, yeah,
Will Acuff 02:31
I'd love to jump into the over 1200 underestimated entrepreneurs launched. That's a fun one to tell the story, and what we mean by that is, we've had over 1200 neighbors here in the middle Tennessee area, Nashville and surrounding area, go through an intensive 10 week program where they learn the tools to play and start and grow their own small business. And they're coming in the room with an idea that they don't know how to grow or where to take it. And we give them everything they need, including a supportive community, to turn that business dream into a money making reality. So it's not just like I want to start a business someday, right? And you're sitting on an idea for a decade, right? We emphasize start small, start now. Right? In other words, what's the shortest distance between you and revenue? And so all of those people, over 1200 people, came in with this idea that turned into this living, breathing reality that had the potential to change not just their economic future, but their family's economic future and then their neighborhood's economic future.
Spencer 03:33
I love that so many people entrepreneurially, the phrase I love to say is it's ready. Aim, aim, aim, aim, aim to never get to fire. Yeah, that's where a lot of entrepreneurial dreams go to die. Is in that aim phase,
Will Acuff 03:50
Absolutely. I mean, you will never get it right, right? That's the reality. However, if you are marginally making progress in generally the right direction, what you will learn over time will turn that idea into something you are incredibly proud of and has the opportunity to give your life a ton of momentum. And so, you know, a story connected to that would be one of our graduates. He came to our class in the fall of 2016 he said, Hey, I want to launch a restaurant. We're like, that's amazing. Do you have half a million of upfront capital, right? Because that's what it takes in Nashville, right? And that was in 2016 now the number given inflation and whatnot is higher, right? But we said, Mandy, do you have that money? Said, No. We're like, cool. Neither do we, right? But where can you start making money now. And he's like, Oh, well, I can start catering and just tapping into my network of friends and family right now. And so within like, a week, he was trying his first business, right? That revenue Exactly. And go, Will people buy this? And it's like, oh, they like this recipe. They don't like this one. Well. At the end of the night when I'm cleaning up, this is the tray that's always full. I should stop making that right, like there's good things you can learn. Well, fast forward, he does that week in, week out, month in, month out, for three years, right? And then the fall of 2019, he launched his first brick and mortar business, after three years of that kind of focus and growth, it's cone heads, chicken and waffles in a waffle cone, which is incredibly delicious. I've seen this, yes, it's amazing.
Carli 05:29
Everything's better in a cone, everything.
Will Acuff 05:30
And if you can take it with you, right? Yeah. And you can even cap it with mac and cheese, like it's, you know, chocolate sauce, or whatever. It's the kind of place you love, but you'd never tell your doctor about right? But he launched that brick and mortar fall 2019, and then we all know what happened next. COVID hit, right? And 41% of black owned small businesses closed permanently in the country during COVID. And I got this call from from this gentleman. His name is Marcus. Got a call from Marcus late that spring, and this is still in, like, the oh my gosh, what's happening phase, right? And I answered the phone, and it was one of those moments where just you're, you know, you have a pit in your stomach, like, Oh, this is going to be bad news, you know. And I was expecting him to say, look, we planned for a lot. We didn't plan for a global pandemic, and restaurants were particularly hard hit. And instead, he said, man, what we learned in the class about pivoting, combined with what we learned right doing catering for all those years has made us incredible at takeout. We are killing it on the Uber Eats game. And he was calling because he wanted to donate five scholarships to support neighbors going through the program. And he knew we'd pivoted to, you know, Zoom classes only for a while. And he's like, let me help out with that. And so it wasn't a, hey, we couldn't make it call. It was, I want to donate call, right? And he now has three brick and mortars.
Carli 06:55
You don't often hear a great entrepreneurial turn around the beginning of 2020, so I was, I was a little nervous about me too. We went, so I was grateful for that. I'm really interested in the fact about the statistic of being predominantly women entering your class. Why do you think that is, yeah, 88% Yeah,
Will Acuff 07:15
I don't have a great answer for that, because we didn't set out, you know, to go like, this is what who we're marketing to. But even in our first class, like, it was predominantly women from the community. It was at that local rec center, McFerrin Park rec center, and something started to happen from a word of mouth perspective, where, like, the word got out that this is where this person had launched her business, right? And then the other thing that we did, that I think has been really the secret to our success, is we, as soon as we graduated that first group of entrepreneurs, we paid the people who wrote the curriculum to come back in and train some of those graduates to be our next round of leaders. And so all of our classes now 13 sites, we started with one. Now at 13, they're all led by graduates of the program. And so I think there's this word of mouth phenomenon that's been, Oh, that's my auntie, you know, and or That's my cousin, and I saw her do this. I can do this right? That said we've been really intentionally trying to grow our numbers, because we know there's incredible guys in the city of Nashville with ideas, and we want to be their first step.
Spencer 08:31
Maybe just walk us through the basic X's and O's of what corner to corner does. So for someone that's never heard about it at all, just walk us.
Will Acuff 08:39
Almost everybody watching right now, we're the best kept secret in Asheville, yeah, yeah. So corner to corner, we focus on economic development, right? And economic development specifically from the lens of, how do you help somebody build a dream life, right? And I want to unpack that for a second, because I think there's amazing nonprofits in our city that focus on when somebody is in a crisis moment, and they help get them to stability right. And those are really important. You know, when we talk about the the unhoused community, or people transitioning out of prison or a health crisis, right? But let's say that that stability journey right takes three years after that. What do you do next? Right? And where we see our unique skill set coming to the table is to say, Hey, neighbor, you don't just get stability, right? You can bring the best of yourself to the table and really dream and really pursue something that will bless not just your family but your whole community, right? And so we're coming from that kind of philosophical perspective, right? What does thriving look like as a question we ask all the time, not just surviving. And so from that standpoint, we go, Well, man, we live in a country with an incredible history of entrepreneurship, right? We have built. And expanded and created millions upon millions of things, right? And we live in a state that fosters that kind of thinking, right? So why wouldn't we make the tools of entrepreneurship easily available to every single neighbor, right? Why should that be something that's hard to find? And so all of our classes happen at local rec centers, family resource centers, historic neighborhood churches, places where the neighbors already mentally and emotionally own the space, right? So instead of saying, hey, come downtown to this space. Maybe you don't know, maybe feels culturally different to you or whatever, right? Or you even have to take three busses to get there, like walk, it's right here, and your kid can be playing basketball in the gym. That's really unique. So it's hyper localized that way. But then practically, what we do nuts and bolts, we go over a 10 week curriculum that starts with the Lean Canvas model. Not sure if you've ever seen this came out of like Stanford and some of their MBA thinking, which is, instead of like a Word document that's like your business pro forma, right? You actually have what looks like, almost like a Monopoly board, right? And it's who's your target customer. And you see a picture of a person and you're writing down on post its Oh, I think it's a woman between the ages of 25 and 38 awesome. What problem are you solving for them? Oh, yeah. And so as you build this board you're writing on post its, you're going through even the math formulas. How do you find your bottom line? How do you know what your startup costs are? And you're doing it in this iterative way where you get to test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. So by the end of it, you will see some of our people with stacks of post its you know that are this high, that's cool, and each one represents something they learned. Because the other thing we build into every single week, so people come up to us, they go, Oh, here's my business idea. And we don't evaluate their business ideas. And the reason being is because I would have passed on Uber Right? Like, get in cars with strangers, like my mom was, like my mom taught me better than that, right?
Spencer 12:03
That you order on the internet. No, what this is? No, no, thank
Will Acuff 12:07
you, right? And I would have lost, right? And so I don't want to presume that I know what the market wants. And so what we teach is, every single week, go out into the community and try to sell your product or service, right? Even if it's just, would you order this flavor, right? So we have folks who come in, they're like, Man, I'm gonna do a vegan ice cream company. We're only gonna sell, like, avocado flavor. And like, two weeks later, they're like, we're not gonna do that. It turns out vanilla and chocolate is pretty good. People don't want the avocado ice cream, you know, right?
Carli 12:39
But they store avocado ice cream?
Will Acuff 12:41
Absolutely yes, right? Now there's somebody who's like angry comment, avocado ice cream is my favorite. All caps, no, so the market instructs right and shapes and forms. Because, again, to your point, this isn't ready. Aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, right. This is how quickly can you make money, right? And so from that standpoint, the class is imminently practical. So that's the 10 weeks. And then we also bring in guest speakers every single week. Sometimes that subject matter experts, that's attorneys, marketing professionals, folks like that, and other times it entrepreneurs who come in and go, Man, let me tell you what I wish I'd known in year one that took me 10 years to learn, if I can save you some of that time, right? And we have in in our city, and I dare say, across the state of Tennessee, incredibly generous people with their time and their knowledge. Like we live in a place where, if you reach out to somebody and go, Oh my gosh, this is what I'm doing. Would you come and invest in this community? I've never had somebody go, eh? Not interested. Everybody's excited to be able to pour into their neighbor like that.
Spencer 13:50
I really appreciate that, because you're hitting on something that has driven me crazy about academia forever, which is you can go to high school, you can even graduate from college and come out with zero skills correct and you academically, perhaps understand what someone has written in a textbook that has very likely never done it before, never met a payroll and doesn't know what your guest speakers come back, your graduates come back and say, Here is real practical advice.
Will Acuff 14:28
Yep, absolutely. I mean, we have people who go, Hey, here's how to get your first 100 followers on Instagram. And then guess what? That's useless unless you know how to sell on Instagram, right? Boom, boom. Because it doesn't matter how many followers you have if none of them are paying customers. Them are paying customers, yeah, right. And so it's like immediately trying to connect to practical, real world outcomes, yeah,
Spencer 14:52
Where did your heart for this community come from? I mean, there's a lot of different underserved communities, and so how did. You feel this calling?
Will Acuff 15:02
Yeah. I mean, so the 30,000 foot view of this is, I was a pastor's kid, as you mentioned, raised in the church. Thought I would go, like, straight from college to seminary, like that was the plan, right? Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be like my dad, right? Because my dad had planted a church, so I'd seen, like an entrepreneurial version of the faith. But coming out of college, I fell in love with being in a rock and roll band, as you do, as one does. I went to NC State undergrad, and then I was working at Duke after graduating as a research analyst in health policy. That was my day job by day,
Carli 15:42
By day, research analyst by night. Let me guess. Okay, we both have to guess drummer, bass, guitar, lead singer. I'm gonna, I'm gonna peg you're like the lead guitar solo,
Spencer 15:54
Ooh, what do you think I'm going vocals?
Will Acuff 15:56
Okay, you are both right. I was lead guitarist and CO lead singer. We were one of those bands that had two like Guster. Yeah, you guys, you pegged me right. My hair was jet black, none of it gray, down on my shoulders.
Carli 16:11
I need a photo. Yeah, they exist somewhere online. Say we should link to one in show notes.
Will Acuff 16:18
Yeah, you could still download the records on iTunes. But so we were playing everywhere from, like, the Apollo and Harlem to the Dallas hard rock like, everywhere in between. And what it started as, like, Oh, this is part of, like, who I am really quickly became an ego building device, right? And I wasn't wise enough at the time to know when that switch happened. But then I got invited to on this trip to Nairobi by an epidemiologist from UNC who's an expert on the AIDS pandemic. And for six months before this trip, he made us meet at his house. Read, like doctrinal stuff, stuff about, like Christian formation and how we think of poverty, but then also economic policy papers and like, how disease migration happens, like, PhD level course in global poverty, and I'd like, never been to Canada, you know what I mean? Like, like, that's where I'm coming from. And we go to Nairobi, and then we separated. So I found myself on the edge of one of the worst slums in Sub Saharan Africa, staying with this family with no running water, and my worldview just dissolved, right? And I didn't even know I had a worldview. And coming back from that trip was one of those moments where it felt like God was saying, hey, I want you over here, right? But it started, I think God is faithful to do like little whispers. And if we don't listen to the Whisper later, you know, the loving Sledgehammer comes, right?
Carli 17:46
Yeah, we call it, what feathers, bricks and Mack Trucks, 100% right?
Will Acuff 17:50
I've, mine only ever had two categories. It was the whisper in the sledgeham best, yeah, the
Carli 17:55
Mack truck is not, no, no, no.
Will Acuff 17:57
I'm grateful that I haven't had that. But, like, I was like that teenager who hears a thumping noise in their car and just turns up the radio, right? Because the band was stroking my ego to such a large degree, I was like, I hear you kind of God, but this is really good, right? And then on my honeymoon, my wife and I, 2004 we had a health crisis that was the sledgehammer. And it was a moment where, you know, metaphorically, the house we were building and the earth we were building it on, like it was destroyed and the earth was salted, like nothing was going to grow there. Wow. And coming out of that two years of suffering, we were more and more convinced of God's call upon our life to really just set our gaze on the margins without clear instructions as to what that looked like. It really was driving us was this idea of like, how do I get a theology of neighbor? And so in 2007 we moved off of Dickerson Road, real close to downtown, and we just decided to do life with an open front door policy. And my wife, Tiffany, who's amazing, she jumped into the deep end, even further than me. She's way tougher than me, like if you meet her, you'll know that immediately. But she started working at the men's prison and became a former offender Job Training Specialist. Oh, wow. So she was behind bars every day helping people learn how to tell a redemptive story so they could get employment when they came home to have one anchor in the storm of that transition, that's incredible. But they were coming home to their neighborhood where we were now living, right? And it was one of those you go to welcome the stranger and realize you're the stranger. And so that we did that for five years, just learning how to weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, and learn the rhythms and the heartbeat of the community before we start a corner to corner. So that's yeah, how we how we got to that?
Spencer 19:52
That's a great answer. It really starts to reveal and peel back some of the layers of your heart. Mm. And how you've served a community that you know we let off the fact sheet, a median black family has 1/10 10% the wealth of a median white family, yeah, and if that wasn't enough, a higher rate of downward mobility, yeah, yeah. I mean that is telling to say where you're planted is a desperately needed place of revitalization and economic activity.
Will Acuff 20:28
I see unending potential all around me, right? And part of that is shaped from my faith background, seeing my neighbors as image bearers, right? They already have passion, creativity and drive. No nonprofit needs to give them what I believe the divine already gave them, right? All we're doing is building a bridge of opportunity for them to express that fully, right? And the reason I get so fired up about entrepreneurship is because it is a canvas that is big enough for them to paint their wildest dreams upon, right? Because any entrepreneur knows that you start and you get to the limit of yourself, and you go, Oh, I don't know how to get past this moment, right? And in a supportive community with right mentors, the right tools, right, which is what we're providing, you get through that moment more often than not, because you're not doing it alone, because people do brave things together, right? And so they come past that moment, and then they get to the next level, and then they get to the next level. It's like Melanie McGee, one of our graduates. She's a school teacher, and she has kids, and she wants an educational, you know, higher education future for those kids. And we all know that our public school teachers are not paid right, as much as we would like to see them paid. And she goes, How am I going to do this? And so she came to us to launch a she was also launching a catering business, coincidentally. And she said, hey, my goal is 10,000 year one right? 10,000 would really change. $10,000 $10,000 of revenue would really change some things for my family. Well, I heard at the end of her year one that she had done over 36,000 so I called her, and I was like, what? How did this happen? Right? That's tremendous percentage growth. Melanie, right? Yeah, exactly, right. And so she goes, Well, you know, I'm a proud graduate of tsu, right, the Tennessee State University. And she found out that their band director, because they have an incredible marching band, she found out that their band director was looking for a new caterer, so she volunteered, right? Talk about using your marketing budget. She volunteered to cater. And then she made sure that her grandma's caramel crumble cake, which right she learned at age five at the you know, apron strings of her grandma, like, if you hear her tell this story, you'll just be weeping. So beautiful. She has this caramel crumble kick. She takes it to the band director, and she slices him just, you know, boom, puts it in his hands and waits for him to taste it, right? Talk about good sales skills, right? And then he's like, You made this, right? She's like, I did. He's like, you can make some more of this. You know? She's like, I can. And I heard you're looking for a new caterer, right? She closed the deal for the whole year. Wow, right? Goes from 10 to 36 but then what I love most about this story is now she's going, You know what, I have this other product that I think would be an amazing fit for some of the grocery store chains in Middle Tennessee, right? And so now she's coming to us, going, Hey, can you hook me up with some of those type of mentors who could help me learn and navigate the right way to take those steps so you're from 10 to 36 to sky's the limit? Yeah, that's what I love about entrepreneurship.
Spencer 23:36
That's great, and that's the power of entrepreneurship, and that's what I think is so compelling, when you see one entrepreneur that is successful can literally change their entire community. They often, if they left the community, come back. They don't forget their roots, and they create jobs. They make change. The power of one person to really hit it and make a difference, is what makes entrepreneurship so special? Yep, absolutely.
Carli 24:06
I think we believe that entrepreneurship will change the world. It's the catalyst for all change
Will Acuff 24:11
Yeah, and it's what humans have been doing since the beginning, right? It was like, I've got this idea, and you've got that idea. What if we put them together, right? Oh my gosh. Now we have a city right, like this is how things happen. And so I I look at that stat, you mentioned the 1/10 right? That is something that has stayed consistent since 1864 in the Emancipation Proclamation, right? And we know that that is not a talent gap, right? That is an opportunity gap. And so for me, I am obsessed with, how do we close that opportunity gap in a meaningful way, right? And to get even more specific, right now, in the US, this is a Goldman Sachs stat, 13% of white men own businesses in the US. It's. Compared to point 5% of black women, right? 13 compared to point five, right? And again, we know that's not a talent gap, that's an opportunity gap. And so how do we close that gap? Because it's not that the 13 has to come down to make the point five go up, right? I believe that the economy is an ocean on a pie, right? So that 13 can also be 13, right? Because new markets will come to bear.
Spencer 25:23
Tell us what you mean, the economy is an ocean, not a pie, yeah?
Will Acuff 25:27
I mean, there's this, there's this idea in some economic thinking that, like, if my, if my slice is slightly larger than yours, must be smaller,
Spencer 25:35
Right, but there's a scarcity,
Will Acuff 25:37
Yeah, that there is an ultimate limit or something, right? And instead, what you find is like, Oh no, no. If you unlock this much new slice of a market, you know, it turns out that you find this new customer base who figures out how to come to you, right? And also, as you do something good, you're now hiring 10 people who are getting slightly more wages, right? Their wages are going up. Their quality of life is going up. And guess what? They spend more money on products just like yours, right? And so my you know, our belief on how that that role is is like our amazing neighbors will bring new products that bless and serve our community into the marketplace, and it will be good, not just for those who want to buy those products, but it will be good for those who want to get those jobs to produce those products.
Spencer 26:25
I want to highlight one thing that you told in Melanie's story that it would have been easy to gloss over, but I want to really bring it to attention, because it has been formative in how I've created my companies, which is that the first thing she did with her product was give it away for free. That is not a natural instinct for most new entrepreneurs and most of us. It's to say, I can't lose money on my product to begin with. I gotta, I gotta sell this thing. But if you can change your worldview to instead operate not in that scarcity, recognizing there's got to be an economic piece to it, but to give away your product in order to market it. And then you even phrased it correctly in saying it's your marketing budget 100% you're not just going to give it away forever. You're going to allocate and say, Okay, I'm going to give away $500 I'm going to give away 5000 it kind of depends upon what your marketing budget is, but it's such an incredible way to be able to gain a foothold. You add the value to somebody, and then it's the opportunity to sell it. So absolutely love to highlight that, and I think it blends really well with the ocean versus the pie concept is changing that scarcity mindset. Yep, is so tough, especially when you come from communities that most of what they've known is scarcity,
Will Acuff 27:51
Yeah, I mean, even myself, like I grew up in a lower middle class family, you know, mom's a dental hygienist, dad's a pastor of a church where you had to kind of bring your own folding chair. You know, for the first five years, it's not like have a jet church, right? Yeah, it was actually he started in the office of a gas station, which I just love, and it grew, grew to several 1000 people by the mid 90s, right? So it's a beautiful story, but I grew up in a in a way, where everything mattered, like you didn't waste anything, right? Hand me downs for you know, hand me down, hand me down, hand me down. And where we really cared about what we had and tried to make it last. And there was a beautiful part of that, right? Because we were, we were making things work for our family, who was on mission. But the downside of that was that I grew up not being audibly taught, but actually learning that there is not enough, right? And if you, if you have that mindset, and I did for the longest time, I'm never looking for anything that could actually expand or grow or cultivate leverage, because I don't even really believe in the concept of leverage, right? I don't even see it. Yeah, right. I see just, how do I get to the next bill? Does that make sense? And that's my story, let alone, you know members of our community.
Carli 29:12
How did you go from a mindset of scarcity to what appears to be a mindset of abundance? And not only it's evident that you did that in your own life, but now you believe that so much for every neighbor that you have, that you have staked your life on it. So I feel like there's a story there from what little I've learned of you, and I feel like I need to hear it.
Will Acuff 29:36
Yeah, I mean, So personally, I learned it through really come to terms with my own story, right? And specifically, moving into the neighborhood, I had all the arrogance of a seminary student, right? Because I was a seminary student, right? And seminary students are great for like. We finally got it all figured out. Listen to me talk about God, right? It's kind of. The vibe, and the first thing that undid me in the neighborhood was seeing neighbors who were so close to their faith and so walking it out that I realized that I had moved next door to saints and that like I needed to sit at their feet, right? So the first part of that was getting humbled, right, but in the right kind of way, not in a shame based way, but, Ooh, there's something bigger happening here, right? That was the first linchpin there. And then the second piece was, you know, we, both of our kids, are through domestic adoption out of Memphis, and my son has disabilities, and his disabilities forced me to see my own limitations, not as something to overcome, but as a gift to embrace. And that, I mean, that took years right of real deep heart work, but once I was able to start to see and take a hold of that, then it felt like, Oh no, no. This hard situation is a gift. Everything is a gift. Well, if everything's a gift, then everything is good for me, right? Like in a profound invitation to abundance, if that makes sense, right? And it won't be necessarily financial abundance, but it could be relational abundance, right? It could be spiritual abundance. It could be, there's so many different ways that that that works. And so for me, you know, they say, you know, it takes a village right? In my case, I live a village life, because my son demands a village right, and having to depend on my community, in that way, both my neighbors immediately, who've poured into us, as well as folks who, I mean, I shared the story when we were hanging out earlier. There was a point in our life where my car was falling apart. Right? When you launch a nonprofit, you're downwardly mobile, I think, by definition, right? So I'm like, zip tying my car together. We had the tornado happened, right? And so there's a leak in my roof. Came through East Nashville. Insurance won't cover it. They say it's mechanical. And then I was like, the tornado wasn't mechanical. Pretty sure.
Carli 32:12
Do you have, like, a new age house I've never heard of, your roof is mechanical?
Will Acuff 32:15
Oh yeah, yeah. It was a long debate. So they won't fix that. And then my son with his disabilities, we hit a breaking point where our support team at Vanderbilt was like, Hey, we think he needs to be institutionalized. And we said, No, that can't be his story, right? So we asked him, What's plan B? And they said, well, Plan B would be for you to get, like, 30 hours a week of this specialized therapy, and then, like, a week later, COVID hit, right? So that wasn't even an option. And then we realized that there was a woman in our community, a graduate of corner to corner, Shamika Adams, she's phenomenal, and she was trained in this kind of therapy. And so I called her, and I said, Hey, like, here's where our family's at. Could you come be a part of our COVID bubble, right? And I can't afford your normal rate. And could you come down in price, because she'd lost all her clients because of COVID, and she came down. I still couldn't afford it. It was going to be about 12,000 a month. And so I started just texting, you know, friends and family, and sent them my Venmo link and just said, Hey, we're trying to keep our son in the home, right? And every time we that Venmo little thing, you know that that icon when you hit your Venmo and it shows you zero, right? Every time it was like, Okay, it's zero today, by the end of the day, there'd be that much more, just enough, right? And then a stranger who heard about our story put a new roof on the house. And then another guy who I was just getting to know was like, Well, I'd like to bless you guys with a new Kia, right? And so the zip tied car was replaced, wow, right? And I didn't do any of it, right? Like that was just the mercy of my relational abundance, right? And so that was when, like, I ended 2020, with just a tremendous level of gratitude and a complete perspective, I think before, it felt scarce, and it felt like I had to be the one to do it. And now I felt like this communal abundance, um, if that makes sense.
Carli 34:27
I don't really have follow up to that. That's, I'm going to be thinking about that for a long time.
Spencer 34:31
Yeah, yeah, that's a really, it's a great, a great explanation for your heart's evolution there. And I think all of our journeys going through that transition from scarcity, whether it's scarcity, financially, scarcity, relationally, there's work in all of us that is moving that meter, hopefully, from the left to the right in health and when it's moving from the right. Right to the left. You know, those are moments where you have to take a step back, and hopefully that's where your community comes alongside you and helps reframe and not reinforce that, that mindset.
Will Acuff 35:11
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's a great point. Yeah, your community has such a vital role to play, yeah? And if you're not careful about that, yeah, it'll go one of two directions.
Spencer 35:21
Yeah, one of my favorite sayings around that is that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time around. Is that Jim Rohn, I should give credit. We'll give credit in the remarks. I don't know who that is.
Will Acuff 35:33
I'm big fan. Yeah, excellent.
Spencer 35:36
We have a segment that we love to do, which is no dumb questions. Okay, so this section, there's a lot of stuff that I just want to know, and sometimes you just don't have the chance to ask it otherwise. So my first question is hard, but I really am interested in your perspective. So I've been around a number of people that I believe, and you can challenge me on this, but I believe they would make terrible entrepreneurs like they, just for a lot of reasons, will not succeed. And if they go down that path, I'm reasonably confident it will lead to their financial destruction in many ways. So I know amongst having graduated 1200 people, maybe some of those I would have correctly or incorrectly put in that category, and there's probably another other people that went through the program and didn't make it through for one reason or another. So how do you deal with that? Or do you just reject the premise altogether? To say Spencer even saying the statement that someone would make a bad entrepreneur is just ignorant and wrong.
Will Acuff 36:44
Yeah, great question. Well, I'll answer it in two parts. The first is, we are never making an argument that entrepreneurship is for everybody, right? And so the way the program is structured, you can miss one class, but you have to make it up, right? So we've got these kind of parameters to keep quality control high, and that kind of thing, right? And then we have people who come through and go, You know what? I learned a lot, but I'm not going to start something right now, okay? But what healthy 100% but what's happened in the midst of that, which I love, is their mindset has shifted from employee to owner, yeah, and they become the best staff member on whatever team they're on, right? And sometimes we'll hear back from them a year later and go, Hey, thank you for that perspective, because now I'm the floor shift manager, right, and I got health insurance for me and my kids right. To me, that's like, Yes, way to go, right? Because if you start thinking like an owner, you're thinking like a problem solver, right? And I think we live in a cultural moment that, for lots of reasons, feels like a company can be saying, Hey, how can I get as much out of you? And this the employees thinking, how much can I get out of you right, for the minimal amount of cost, right, which is a dynamically unsustainable way to approach that relationship, right? And so we are trying to teach No, no, no, if you think like this, you'll be a value add and all sorts of tangible and intangible ways that will change your life, right? And then the second thing is, I actually think that we think about entrepreneurship wrong. And what I mean is like, pre industrial revolution, every family was an entrepreneur, right? It was, grandma was selling pies, you know, at church on Sundays, right? It turned out dad was really good with horses, so in in addition to the family farm or whatever else they had going on, he was helping break a neighbor's horse, yeah, you know, like everybody had something that was bringing a little extra income in and we live in a moment where, I think, from a work and professional standpoint, the gig economy is shifting us to a place where it used to be. You work for this company, you retire, they take care of you with the pension. You get the watch and the bad cake at the party. Right? Those days have passed, right? And so if you're in the gig economy right now, guess what? You're an entrepreneur, right? You might not be thinking of it that way, but you're being ushered into a new way of being that. I think that if we structure that intentionally and do new things, we can invite more people to think of themselves that way. And what will happen is their horizons will open.
Carli 39:21
You keep talking about neighbors, and I just have to think of the OG guy that loved his neighbor besides Jesus, would be Mr. Rogers. And so I'd have to ask the question in this segment, yeah, was your life influenced by Mr. Rogers, or is it more of a biblical neighbor, like when you keep saying neighbor, I just want to say, yeah,
Will Acuff 39:44
it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Yeah. I truth. Truthfully, I was always a little scared of that show, because the the mix of, like, real people and puppets like, was something I couldn't I could never really handle as a kid. Same reason for Muppets, right? Like, I. That said, Yeah, Jesus, call to love neighbor as self, I think is one of the most under appreciated statements, right? Because he doesn't say, only love your neighbor at the expense of self, right? But he actually says, hey, the same attention and detail you give your own life, give that to your neighbor. What a wild idea, right? Because that would mean, not only am I focused on my own economic future, like, because, to be honest, most of us are pretty obsessed with it, right? And it's encouraged, right? Like, I don't say that as a cultural abnormality, like, you should have a 501, you know, you should have your retirement plan going, right? You should like have figure out all the pieces and then carefully monitor it, right? But to do that level of attention to your neighbor seems utterly radical, right? And so Jesus calling us in it's not a shameful call, but rather it's like, I promise you more joy in your life, because your life will only be enriched by the joy unfolding in your neighbor's life, because joy is contagious, right? And so like, to me, somebody asked me recently. They said, Well, what's in it for you? Like, and they, and you could tell they've been wanting to ask that question for a couple years, right? And and I'm addicted, like, straight up addicted to the fact that when I see my neighbor's life start to blossom, when the light comes on in their eyes and they see their own future differently, they see their own capabilities differently, right? And they start believing in a yes future for themselves, like I want to be around that energy all the time, and to me, inviting more neighbors into that is how I love my neighbor, and it's only good for me, like I wake up more joyful now than I did when we moved in 2007 and I can't wait to see what happens next.
Carli 41:54
So you think about that light bulb moment, and people are starting their own businesses and changing their communities. I got to know what are some of the wildest ideas that you guys have had? Brought to you great question of businesses that people want to start? Yeah, because you said that you never evaluate their idea, right? You just give them the tools to evaluate it themselves. But I know sometimes you're probably like, wow,
Spencer 42:17
You do on the inside. You do on the there's an idea.
Will Acuff 42:20
No, it's funny, people rarely like, I really have to dig to get somebody's idea. Most of the time, they're just like, I'm ready to go. And that's, you know, they don't give me too many details because I'm not teaching the classes anymore. This just happened literally on my way here, I stopped at 711 and the lady working at 711 she's like, Do I know you? And I was like, I don't know. She's like, corner to corner, and she's like, I'm about to start a business. And then the other lady at 711 was like, and I'm gonna start my business too. And this is what the best, you know, and my daughter's in there with me. She gets to see this, you know, my eight year old. But yeah, wildest business ideas, the avocado ice cream was not hypothetical. That was a real story.
Carli 43:01
It could be delicious. Could be could be delicious.
Will Acuff 43:05
One we had that I thought was brilliant, that I never would have thought of, was a mobile notary, because you can never find a notary. Oh, that's genius. Anytime you need a notary, you're like, Oh, I'm sorry, they only work every third Tuesday for nine and a half minutes, right? And so she Adrian bowling is her name a one mobile notary is her company, and she comes up with this idea. She does it on her own. Does like 35k in business that first year, but stalls for growth, right? Doesn't know what to do next, finds corner to corner, takes the program and does 85k right? And now she's doing way more than that, and she's turning it into a technology solution where she's the top provider, sending out other notaries, right, where she's not bearing any of the cost of their stuff, right, but getting a slice of everyone. And so to me, that's like, oh, I never would have thought of that, right? Yeah, there's others. One of our graduates, I can't remember the name of the business, but it was specialized hair care products for black women, but in a vending machine at HBCUs historically black colleges and universities. Brilliant idea, right? Immediately accessible, right? So there's a ton of different like, really niche ideas that wouldn't, you know, come across my radar. But I think having specialty hair products, I mean, my brows could use a little organic brow care. I learned that the markup in that world is phenomenal. Oh sure, yeah. So I've learned so so so much.
Carli 44:38
Okay, one more, and this is fun. Last one you said, one of the most meaningful things that your instructors, your your graduates, that come back to instruct, is what I wish I had known on day one. Yeah, and it's actually a question Spence, and I love to ask people as what could would you wish you could tell yourself, and we do with our kids, baby, you just graduated seven. Grade. What do you wish you had known on your first day of seventh grade? So what do you wish you had known in your first day of corner to corner?
Will Acuff 45:08
Man, I think again, this goes back to the scarcity mindset. If I'm if I'm moving from that space, and I'm very tight fisted and I'm demanding a certain level of like, control over things. And so I'd tell myself, Hey, you don't have to be that tight, right? Like, I would encourage myself to open up and dance with the work instead of control the work, if that makes sense. Because what I find is, as soon as I do that, the right door opens, the right person shows up for coffee. You know, the right person goes, Hey, have you ever thought of this? And so I, I just wish I had known earlier that I can dance through this.
Spencer 45:55
I think that's really good. That's that really tough dynamic that is uniquely faith based, that the upside down of how the Lord has scripted this planet, much to my frustration, is the harder you grab the wheel, the more difficult it is to turn your journey is rougher. It's that balance between being open handed with your plans, not being lazy, right, not being defeatist. Yes, it is showing up, yep, and being all in but still being open handed, holding it like you would a baby bird. Yes, no, that's right,
Will Acuff 46:36
Because, like, I, if you you know, if we hang out more, right? You'll see I am hyper goal oriented, right? Like my time is very structured, like, you know, all those things, but that's so that I can show up fully, so that I can show up well. But where I am learning how to have an open handed approach is with all the outcomes, right, especially with family members, friends, colleagues in my life, right? Because I can have my own goals, but I can only have dreams for other people as soon as I invert that and I have goals for you. Right now, we're in trouble.
Spencer 47:13
One of the producers of the show and I were talking leading up to this, and I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. He was saying that there is a difference between a quality of opportunity and a quality of outcome. And I think corner to corner captures this well, because our culture, particularly when it comes to all things race, gets very angry with the effort to have equality of outcome, because there's so much frustration around well, what is merit based what is not? And that's a tale that has left a lot of wounds in a lot of society. Equality of opportunity is a different thing, and I just would love to hear your thoughts about when I say the distinction between equality of opportunity and the equality of outcome. What does that mean to you in the real world as someone that is experiencing the dramatic disparity Yeah, between white and black communities. Can you speak to what that means to you?
Will Acuff 48:26
Yeah, that's a great question. I love that framing some reminded we have a team meeting every Monday. It's all hands, right? And there's always a project read out like this is what this core team is working on. And yesterday's was all about how we started the program with two co facilitators, right? Because we know some people respond to one leader versus another, different learning styles, right? We wanted to have two up front, but what we learned over time was that we also needed a coach who's coaching those two doing real time leadership development, right? And then yesterday, what we learned is, now the coaches are getting together, yeah, and they're sharing best practices, right? That was the readout. And what I thought about when I was listening to this was that our team is obsessed with the quality of the product, right? The product is the most incredible entrepreneurship training you are going to find anywhere. Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah, right. Like, I want this thing compared with Stanford's MBA program, right? That's the quality opportunity. I love that, right? And I can obsess about that, and we can measure that, right? There's ways we can measure that. We do a custom pre and post behavioral study with Vanderbilt, and they measure seven statistically significant factors to see if we've made outcome improvements over the class, right? So we can get really nitty gritty on some of that. But then, when it comes down to how do you measure the outcome, that's where you're touching a neighbor's agency, right? And what they do with the opportunity, right? And that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yeah, that happens in a family, that happens in a neighborhood, right? There's all these other factors. So it's not just their agency, it's also where they are, yeah, and so the way I think about this sometimes is like, politically, right now, I think we have this moment where, you know, I think the right gets it wrong when they don't think systems are involved, and the left gets it wrong when they don't think neighbors have agency, right? There is both of these things happening, right? And if we could say it doesn't matter which is which right here in this moment, right? Let's, let's have a both and solution, then what we can do is create quality opportunities and then also build long term support that change the quality of the outcome, yeah, and to me, I can't, I can't do all the things for quality of outcome, right, but I can do a ton on the quality of opportunity. And then the last thing I'd say to that is, we are, we have a lifetime guarantee. So we do alumni support services like one on one. You know, bass berry Sims, a big law firm here in Nashville. They're a partner of ours. They do one on one pro bono legal help with our entrepreneurs. That's incredible. That alone is well worth the cost of right?
Spencer 51:10
I know those guys. They're expensive.
Will Acuff 51:14
And well worth it. Thank you. Bass berry Sims, not a sponsor of this video, but what we're what we're seeing, is like, hey, lifetime guarantee for us means that as long as you are still in the arena, right, you're still trying to sell a product or service, whatever wall you're hitting, we will work with you on it, right? It's like we had one person who came through a balloon service company, right? Like, fancy balloon arches for big corporate parties, that kind of thing. I didn't know how much money there were in balloon arches, but apparently that is a growth market, right?
Carli 51:47
It's a lot,
Will Acuff 51:48
Yeah, it's so much money, right? But his name is Lamar. He has a business called La marvelous and amazing, right? But he he was working a full time job that was making solid money, but in a city that's getting more and more expensive, it wasn't growth money, right? So he's doing this as his side hustle, until his side hustle started making more than his day job. Oh, wow, right? And then we got him a mentor, boom. He starts going growing this thing more and more. Now he has employees, right? But now he's doing contracts that are so big he can't do it in his own garage, right? And he hits this point where it's like, I need to find somebody who can navigate me through that with our lifetime guarantee. He calls us. We put him together with someone who knows the commercial real estate space, and now he has a trusted voice speaking into that for him, right? And so the quality of his outcome was influenced because he stayed in the community. Does that make sense? Yeah, but if you wash out of the community, I don't have any influence over that anymore.
Spencer 52:48
Will. One other honored tradition that we have here is we ask each guest to bring in something that reveals a little bit about their personality. So I have an action figure over my shoulder. I have a book here in the middle of the table. Yeah? Take both of those and tell us what you brought in. Yeah?
Will Acuff 53:03
So the action figure is Marty McFly from Back to the Future Part One, which I was the first movie I saw in the movie theater, 1985 I was five years old. It was probably inappropriate for me to see at the time 80s, you know, pastor's kid. Yeah, exactly. That's true. I couldn't listen to rock and roll music, but I could see that movie. The didn't make sense, but I that's still my favorite movie, and one of the reasons is it had this theme throughout it, of you can change your future like you can dynamically change, right? And a whole new world can open up to you. And even as a kid, I was like,
Spencer 53:41
Oh, wow, that's some deep stuff coming out of there, right?
Will Acuff 53:45
And so I've held on to that, and that sits on my desk. Love that movie, and then this book, The 15 commitments of conscious leadership as a rule. I don't like books that have leadership in the title, right? I think maybe something about being a pastor's kid and my dad always handing me leadership books, but this book in particular starts with this idea that we can be 100% responsible for our own physical, spiritual and emotional well being, no matter what our context is. And it's such a radical idea. And when I read that, and started learning how to go, oh, wait a minute. This. You know, this thing happened at work, and I was looking to blame. But how do I own first instead of blame? And and each chapter has a different commitment. And so the first commitment is I commit to being 100% responsible for my own physical, spiritual and emotional well being, wow, and that is one that I try to live by every day.
Spencer 54:49
I think that's a really profound thing. One of my favorite checks on myself is to measure one's emotional health. It is the gap of time. Between stimulus and response. So put in non scientific forms, it's the moment of time for someone giving you the finger and you yelling and screaming right back at them. Yep, absolutely. My emotional health, when it's fragile, it is an instantaneous response, right? You get stimulated by something, and you're all over Absolutely. The more that you can stretch that to one second, five seconds, 30 seconds, your perspective changes, yep. And I really hear that in your description of being fully responsible, yeah, for what was it?
Will Acuff 55:39
Your spiritual, physical and emotional, yeah, and that on the emotional side for me, the AHA, was realizing that that's a skill I can develop, yes, and by intentional practice every single day, as Thomas Merton said, find your practice and practice it. And that that book has helped me to do that.
Spencer 55:59
Hearing the journey that you've gone on with corner to corner and my reflections on it, I hear a couple themes that carry throughout. One, an unbelievable focus for practicality that touches a heart cord for me that has run my entire life, because nothing makes me more angry than to see someone who already has pulled themselves to a place where, probability wise, they weren't likely to get there, but then to see them underserved, taken advantage of, or in some way hyped up to believe something that turns out to be empty and false promises. There is just a special place in hell for people that take advantage of weak that pounce Yes, because when you're really trying passionately to impact your community. You want to believe right? You want to get there and to see that so opposite in how corner to corner does things, to not only meet them where they are, but to do so with a lifetime guarantee is really fantastic. And it's not the Hokey lifetime guarantee, but hearing it to say we will be there equip you with the mentors that you need today. But I think what you also showed is that the need for mentorship that you have does evolve.
Will Acuff 57:31
Oh, absolutely, yeah, the mentor you need in year two is very different than if you're like, hey, we're working on working capital versus we're working on growth capital. Yes, right? And hey, we actually might franchise this thing. Who can I talk to about that? Right? Those are all very different and niche mentors. And as you grow, yeah, you need those voices speaking into your life.
Spencer 57:53
With a special focus on the black community, where more than 50% are under 35 years old. That just brings me so much joy and so much hope for a state here in Tennessee that has really a lot of challenges. Look at Memphis, 60% of families there are single parent households, and there's opportunity to transform community. And I think that's the other reflection that I take out of your story, is that the community is a theme that runs from their very first class. It's done in a place that's familiar, not extracted into a place that's unknown and uncomfortable, because we've all felt that you come into a place and it's just like you're bewildered, not only just getting there, but once you're there, it takes you a while to just get settled, to be able to be there and be with your fellow classmates in a place that's familiar. I think there's so much intentionality to how you're cognizant of the community and investing in that community that I just love to have your story be one that we highlight as someone really making a difference in Tennessee, doing so, Faith minded, practical minded. So thank you for sharing the story with us.
Will Acuff 59:15
Thank you very much. And those, those are definitely our themes. Because I think sometimes in the nonprofit space we have this pity mindset, yeah, right. It's why we've never done a banquet fundraiser, right? Because that becomes a genre, almost like, if you are watching a horror movie, you know what to expect, right? Somebody's gonna jump out, right? And the nonprofit space almost has this genre of like, hey, you know, donor or volunteer, you get to be the hero and neighbor who needs the help. You get to be the victim, right? But we have a neighbor first practice, which is no, no, no, we are both coming to the table as neighbors, right? We are both coming as givers and receivers. And so I think business. Because in the context of community, does that I'm not somebody that you feel bad for, that you're trying to help, right? I am an incredible entrepreneur who's coming with a product that would actually help your life, right? And suddenly it's like, whoa, wait a minute. What just happened? Right? We're coming as peers. We're coming together, rather than with this weird power dynamic that I don't know what to do with, right? And so I think that is a critical way that we create neighborhoods with actual neighbors. Moving forward into the future,
Spencer 1:00:35
Will, founder of corner to corner. Thank you.
Will Acuff 1:00:38
Co founder with my wife. If I don't say that, I will get a note.
Spencer 1:00:44
Co Founder of corner to corner with Tiffany, right? Tiffany, that's right. Thank you for being here.
Will Acuff 1:00:49
Thank you guys.
