May 26, 2025 • 37 mins
Lucinda Koza welcomes Will Acuff—entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of Corner to Corner—for a rich conversation about parenting, purpose, and what it means to truly ally with your community. From playing the Apollo to launching 1,600+ small businesses, Will’s journey defies the expected—and reveals the radical power of showing up with curiosity, compassion, and a theology of neighbor.
Will also opens up about parenting a son with disabilities, his wife’s journey with trauma, and how personal healing has reshaped everything from their marriage to their mission. This episode is a masterclass in turning hardship into joy, over-functioning into empowerment, and burnout into deep, grounded presence.
🔑 Key Topics Covered:
- Will’s transition from rock musician to nonprofit co-founder
- The power of proximity: what it means to “do life together”
- Starting a movement for underestimated entrepreneurs
- Parenting a child with autism and rare disease
- Trauma work and healing within a marriage
- How to stop over-functioning and let others own their journey
- Creating space for joy—even when life feels like Everest
📚 Mentioned in This Episode:
- Will’s book: No Elevator to Everest (available on Amazon)
- Corner to Corner nonprofit: cornertocorner.org
📌 Memorable Quotes:
“When people have the tools to thrive—they thrive.”
“You don’t know what kind of seed you’re holding until you nurture it.”
“Joy and suffering are not opposites—they’re companions.”
🔗 Connect with Will Acuff:
Instagram: @willacuff
Website: cornertocorner.org
Book: No Elevator to Everest
🎧 Listen + Subscribe:
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share with someone who needs to hear it. New episodes every week.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
welcome to how I Ally.
(00:02):
I am Lucinda Koza, and I'm joined by my third male guest ever.
Would you please introduce yourself and give a little bit of a bio backstory? Yeah.
Glad to be here and grateful to be the third male guest like this is.
(00:25):
Yeah, I feel honored.
Yeah.
Will Acuff I am outta Nashville, Tennessee.
Been here with my family for the last 18 years.
And the highlights of my bio would be that I was coming outta college, I was at night touring in a rock band, playing everywhere from the Apollo in Harlem to the Dallas Hard rock and everywhere in between.
(00:48):
And my claim to fame is I didn't get booed off the Apollo stage.
That's huge.
Yeah.
It was a big deal.
And then.
By day I was a research analyst in health policy at Duke University, and so I had this weird double life but was really like the band had become like an ego play for me, right? That's what it was about.
And I met this epidemiologist.
(01:09):
I.
From the University of North Carolina, who is an expert in the AIDS pandemic.
And he started leading like these Sunday afternoon conversations about global poverty and about the ins and outs and all the different kind of complicated factors that, make that what it is.
And then he led us on a trip to Nairobi.
This would've been in 2002.
(01:30):
And we all separated when we got there.
So I was staying with the Kenyan family.
On the edge of one of the worst slums in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it was the first time I'd seen anything like the AIDS pandemic, up close and personal.
And it's a cliche story to say middle class white boy has to learn that poverty is real by going to Africa, right? But it's absolutely what happened to me.
(01:54):
And coming home from that, it was like my worldview dissolved and I didn't even know I had a worldview.
Do you know what I mean? That was the minute I was like, oh my gosh.
And coming outta that, it wasn't a straight path, but coming outta that in the years to come, my wife and I started to go, what would it look like to actually, get what I would describe as a theology of neighbor.
(02:15):
Meaning how do you actually love neighbors? Not as like a one-off thing, but as a daily rhythm of your life.
And so 18 years ago, we moved into a historically low income neighborhood and started to do life.
And out of that, my wife started working at the men's prison.
Tiffany became a former offender job training specialist, helping justice involved neighbors come home.
(02:38):
I.
And then we were in their neighborhood, right? And so we just did life together and they were all kind and patient enough to help me, take my foot outta my mouth learn what I didn't know, right? Like the kindness of proximity.
And after about five years of that, we launched a nonprofit that was focused on economic opportunity.
(03:00):
And since then we've, now our work is about helping underestimated neighbors plan, start and grow small businesses.
And so we've now launched 1600 plus of these businesses and last year put 37 million back into the neighborhood economy.
Yeah.
So it's that's my day job.
(03:21):
And then I also have a new book out about doing life at home with disability.
So we could talk about either of those things.
I wanna talk about all of it.
Yes, I love it.
And how they do this.
Yeah.
Yeah, they do that all time.
The time for the audio.
(03:42):
I was interlacing my fingers when I said Do this.
Yeah.
There was a connectivity.
Yeah, Yeah.
And how, okay.
Okay.
Alright.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
First of all, that's incredible.
That's absolutely, that's drop jaw droppingly.
(04:05):
Incredible.
That number of six.
Yeah.
It's been a wild ride.
Yeah.
How do you, do, how do you feel? I feel like the luckiest person in the world, like I, this is, it has gone so far beyond my wildest dreams.
Like when my wife and I were hanging out on our front porch.
(04:27):
And we were in these conversations with neighbors who had all these amazing, passion and skills and drive, but there wasn't like a big enough bridge of opportunity to turn that, into something for the marketplace, right? Yes.
Our initial goal was like, could we launch like 10 businesses? What would that look like? And then, like right now we have a 3000 plus person wait list for this program.
(04:51):
Like it's Oh my nuts.
So yeah, I feel incredibly grateful to be doing the work that aligns with the purpose of my soul.
Oh that's like the definition of happiness is like when what you do and what you say is Yes.
Aligned with what you want or what you think, or what, yeah.
(05:16):
Yep.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's there, there's this quote.
I, of course cannot, I don't, I can't even think of who said it.
But it, it's something like it's something like the distribution of I'm gonna cry.
It's like the distribution of talent is.
(05:38):
Equal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the distribution of opportunity is not Yeah.
That's 100% my experience.
Yeah.
Wow.
So how, so when did you have chil? When did you guys have children? Yeah tiffany and I, even in our dating, we talked about wanting to adopt one day.
(06:01):
That was, part of our kind of foundational ideas about what will it look like to be us? And we chose to adopt our son when so he was an infant when we adopted him.
And then that whole experience made us go, wait a minute, I think we only wanna do adoption, so we ended up adopting twice.
(06:22):
So my son is now 13 years old.
And he's our child with disabilities autism among several other diagnoses, including some rare muscular disease stuff.
And then my daughter is typically developing and she's nine years old.
And we have a very, we are a very modern and eclectic family here in Nashville.
(06:45):
Yeah.
That's lovely.
Yeah.
So I don't, I have so many directions I wanna go.
Yeah.
I'm here for it.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
(07:06):
Okay.
I'm just, I'm gonna go this direction.
Okay.
So when did you, so I'm going to give personal so how soon in, in your son's life.
Was he diagnosed or did you have him evaluated? Yeah.
(07:29):
Yeah.
So our journey really first began, he was our first child.
And first time parents, you don't, you just don't know things, right? There's no way for you to know things, right? I don't care what book you're reading or what, like YouTube thing you're watching, right? Being a parent is as one friend put it, he said, I could try to explain scuba diving to you, but if you've never even been in a pool, you won't really have the frame of reference.
(07:53):
And I've always found that a useful idea.
And we probably would've known sooner had he been our second child or whatever, but our, so our journey really began where around age two and a half, he stopped sleeping through the night and not just one or two times, that fuzzy thing, that happens with young parents often, but it was, days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to years.
(08:14):
Multiple sleep studies at Vanderbilt University here in Nashville, surgeries to improve oxygen intake, like all the things.
But it didn't.
Changed the fact that he was still like up, right? Two nights out of 10 he'd sleep, but then those other times we were up and engaged and.
So that began the journey of diagnosis.
(08:36):
And at first it was things like, oh wait, there might be a cognitive thing here.
It's hard to tell.
Or there might just be a learning delay or there might be a language disorder, sensory processing.
Like you go through all the things.
And parents who've been on this path, no.
Like the diagnostic world is not like a clean, simple checkbox.
(08:57):
It is a very messy journey.
Where you're often you're never given like a all right, we figured it out and here's the playbook.
Go do this.
Yeah.
It's much more, you're like, oh, we got a little bit more idea over here and a little bit more over here.
And so it was around age five and a half that we got the official, a SD autism, diagnosis.
(09:21):
And again since then, like we've continued.
To get different diagnoses related to other parts of his life and his wellbeing.
And most recently, a couple years ago glycogen storage disease, which is neuromuscular genetic disease in the rare disease category.
So we're our family has been dynamically affected both by neurodiversity, issues and opportunities.
(09:44):
And yeah.
Like physical disabilities.
Yeah and it has been both the most wonderfully challenging thing that I could have ever imagined.
And has been like I cannot fathom that I'd be having a life of this much joy.
If it hadn't happened.
That's so beautiful.
(10:07):
Oh, someone that I interviewed recently actually said that joy comes from growth, which comes from.
Stress.
So I, yeah, I imagine that's, I think that's true.
(10:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think, I used to think that like joy and suffering were mutually exclusive or something.
And I don't think that's true.
I actually think that there are ways to thrive in the midst of what we're going through.
Rather than waiting for some day where it's all fixed or something.
(10:49):
You know what I mean? Yes.
Yeah.
And yeah.
So in our journey it was not, I don't mean to paint a rosy picture where we figured it out in two years or something like that.
Not at all.
This has been a decade plus of unfolding.
And we, my wife and I, we've consistently.
Hit walls that then showed us that was the moment that we needed to level up our skillset and do more work internally ourselves so we could show up in better health for our kids.
(11:20):
And so it became way less about getting, my son.
Treatment and became way more about oh no.
Oh, I just touched some trauma in my own life, huh? Ooh, I need to do the work of healing there so I can show up in a more loving, tender hearted whole presence kind of way for my son.
(11:41):
Oh man.
Can you give an example? Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Let's get really, I'll get really practical and this is like a big part of this is the story of the book No Elevator to Everest, where I had a framework growing up and I think this is really common, especially, maybe in America, but it's like I learned how to do work out here, like outside of my body.
(12:06):
There's a problem, solve it.
So my whole framework was problem solve, and then at home my child was not responding to problem solve, right? And then in the face of that, and I have permission from Tiffany, my wife, to talk about this, but, in her own trauma journey, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD.
(12:27):
And had acute clinical depression, bouts that would be hard for her to get out of bed, and I had the same, I'm gonna problem solve my wife too, right? So now there's two, two problem solve patterns that, by the way, that is not how relationships work.
Yeah.
Like that's not how humans work, right? We're meant to be known and enjoyed.
(12:49):
And so it, I, it hit a breaking point.
Where my wife found some really good trauma a trauma intensive place here outside of Nashville.
We call it trauma camp in our family.
And she went to trauma camp.
That's great.
And she came home and I saw like new Seeds of Hope for her.
And like a new tool set.
(13:10):
And she was like, you have to go too.
And I was like.
Aren't we therapized enough? Was my gut reaction and never a good sign if you're inventing words to debate your partner.
That's a recipe for disaster.
But my wife, she is, she, my wife is a badass, and she was like no, you have to go, and so I went, and day one I was there with all the arrogance in the world, right? I'm here to get a framework to help fix my wife, right? All that kind of nonsense.
(13:40):
But by the end, this place was so good and so skilled that by the end of day two I was cracked open, like weeping, knowing I was there for me and being taught tools to connect with myself with compassion and curiosity.
And it completely changed everything.
And then coming home from that, I was going back to a challenging context, right? In a lot of ways, an intense context.
(14:07):
And so the question then became if this was just a mountaintop moment, it'll ultimately be worthless.
I need to live this way every day, right? And so I started looking at my own life as a joy lab.
Like, how could I create more joy every day? And so you ask like practically how that plays out, right? One thing that I needed to do was create space every morning to connect with myself before I just went about my day.
(14:33):
And my son with the sleep disorder.
All the things, there's plenty of reasons not to get up earlier.
Yeah.
Or to try to carve back the sleep, but I said no.
On average, on good days, he's waking up at five.
Okay.
I can start to go to bed earlier.
I can move a coffee maker to the bedroom.
I can set my alarm at four.
(14:55):
I can move a chair next to the window, and I can make that cup of coffee.
I can sit in that chair and I can move towards myself with curiosity and compassion by wondering what am I feeling the most right now? Because when we wake up in the morning, none of us wake up neutral.
Like we're already flooded by the thing we saw on the news the night before, or the conversation before bed.
(15:18):
That didn't go how we thought it would go.
All that stuff is just like right there.
Yeah.
And most of the time I would just stuff all that and try to go about my day, right? Or stuff, all that.
And then go try to care and be present with this dynamic kiddo, and it was a recipe for burnout and disaster.
Yes.
And emotional disconnection with self.
(15:38):
And so a really practical way was like taking that first 10 minutes of the day to do like a, what I call an emotional trailhead exercise.
Which is just like you'd walk a trail into the forest, right? What is the biggest thing I'm feeling right now? And can I move towards it with curiosity and compassion? So it might be, oh man, we've got that doctor's appointment today, and I'm really worried that they're not gonna have an answer for us.
(16:07):
And what will that mean? And then as I get curious that I go, oh, I'm believing that if they don't have an answer, then we're just stuck.
And then I'll be able to ask myself, wait a minute, will, have you talked to every doctor in the universe? No, I actually haven't.
Okay, cool.
So is it possible that there's another doctor if this one doesn't pan out? You know what actually it is, and I can name and feel the fear and then release it.
(16:36):
And then when my son wakes up, I can move towards him with that processed already versus move towards him with that fear subconsciously running the show.
Yes.
That's a practical example.
That's such a good example because I, children with autism, people think.
(17:00):
There's this misconception that they don't feel as much or they don't feel empathy, but it's the opposite.
It's so the opposite.
Big feelers, they are sensitive.
They are.
That's why they can become overstimulated and overwhelmed.
(17:24):
And, because they are so sensitive they pick up on everything.
Absolutely.
Like they, I think about it like a, like I might have one antenna up.
You know what I mean? My son has 25 antenna, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:44):
And I and they're like reaching in places that you can't even see totally.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
I can't tell you how many moments we've had, like some kind of thing where my son was picking up on a sub current, like an emotional sub current, that he was 100% accurate about.
(18:10):
But had not been like, named and brought into the room, yeah, that's it.
It, yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
So that's, it becomes so important to process your own.
Or to regulate, to self-regulate.
(18:34):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I find, most of the time when I'm talking to parents who are faced with some of these unique, again, challenges and opportunities, that are on a journey of disability they're always looking at the kid.
And they have not yet had that moment of starting to look at themselves.
(18:57):
And I just, I find consistently that the minute you're able to turn towards self with a little love and compassion and curiosity, like there can be a paradigm shift that can really change things for families that is so important.
It's so important.
(19:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm curious what's your experience like? Do you find that people are mostly focused on kind of the problem solve kind of thing and that's the rhythm? Or are you finding more people turning towards self-awareness? I, okay.
I have found that usually I, I have found that there's one parent.
(19:41):
That is taking on the lion's share of all of it.
Including the self-awareness, the working on oneself and regulating the self and the where and it, I don't know if that.
(20:07):
Lets the other parent off the hook somehow.
Ooh.
Interesting.
Now we're into codependent patterns.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's, yeah.
I do think, part of my story is I'm a classic over functioner.
(20:28):
And learning how to not hero people who aren't asking me to hero them.
Oh, that's been a big growth thing.
But what it actually allows to happen is like other people to really thrive and flourish and take ownership of their own journey.
Yes, but woo, that's hard work.
(20:50):
'Cause you're stealing it from them in a way if you're saving them, quote unquote Yeah.
You're stealing their own journey.
Yeah.
And I think agency like believing that you know your partner and your child and what, and your fellow person.
(21:10):
Whoever you're talking to actually has agency and something beautiful to bring to the table, right to the city, to the neighborhood, to the family, whatever it is.
It might look different than your expecting or whatever, but that's more about you and your own judgment versus them and their own unique beauty, yeah.
(21:32):
Yes you're absolutely right.
And I've thought this about my father so many times because he is sick.
He has Parkinson's and I've been, in charge of his finances for a while and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And yeah.
I really felt like I had to take care of his emotions.
(21:52):
Yeah.
For a while.
Yeah.
And then I realized wait a second.
He's a grown ass man.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
What made you realize that was there a moment of awareness? Yes.
(22:13):
Yeah.
It was like I was a, I was afraid that something was gonna hurt his feelings.
Like I, I was afraid to tell him some truth, like like I, he had to move or he he something.
Yeah.
I was like I was like, horribly.
(22:37):
Terrified of hurting his feelings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I really, and then I thought this is the same man that HA was, has been my dad my whole life.
And went to work every day and drank whiskey in front of the TV at night and didn't Yeah.
(23:02):
This is that fucking guy.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna hurt his feelings.
And even if I do he can deal with it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
That was such that, that was such a huge release of a self-imposed burden.
(23:26):
Yeah.
That phrase self-imposed burden.
I think it's so yeah.
All of us on some level are carrying out uninvestigated stories, yeah.
And I found, at least for me, because I was, because through a lot of different rhythms with my own family of origin and everything else, like I learned basically figure it out, dude.
(23:49):
Like you better do all the things and then some if you want to feel safe, right? Yes.
It meant that I couldn't.
I like subconsciously I couldn't not hero, yes.
But after, like this, the healing trauma intensive I did, and like some of the work, like the internal work, realizing like, oh no, I need to show up with a hundred percent responsibility for my own physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing and allow others to have a hundred percent responsibility for theirs.
(24:24):
So it's not 50 50 and we're negotiating a percentage.
That's how I used to do life.
It's a hundred.
100.
Yes.
And that changed how, Tiffany and I parent.
So practical example and I'm here I'm using, there's a great thing that the drama triangle, it's a tool I love.
Where it's like hero, victim, villain, right? And sometimes we run the bases in those three roles in our relationships.
(24:49):
And like me as the hero, I come home say after work, and let's say my son's having a hard time and my wife's trying to help get him regulated, right? In the past, I would've just jumped in, taken over for her and tried to like, insert myself into the situation, and then she'd get mad, right? And she would play the villain role.
(25:10):
Will, why did you do that, right? And then I'd go from hero to victim.
Why won't you let me help you? You don't understand.
I'm just trying to help you.
And we and then she might run to hero and try to make me feel better.
And just like in this subconscious pattern all the time, and after all this, I might come into the same scenario, but I see this moment for Tiffany, and I'll go to her as a fellow grown ass adult, right? And I'll say, Hey, could I be helpful right now? And she gets to say, yes, actually, would you jump in? Or, you know what? I'm good.
(25:47):
Hey, would you go check on our daughter? I.
Who's in a room or everybody's fine.
This is just life.
This will take me 10, 15 minutes.
Would you please go start dinner? And it's a completely different rhythm, yeah.
And I'm not trying to say we get it right all the time, but we get it right a whole lot more now that we even know it was there.
(26:08):
Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
That's.
Great.
That is great.
It is really helpful.
Yeah.
Wow.
So I wonder how much that shows up with your son, because obviously.
(26:39):
Hopefully you, you and your wife won't be around at some point and he will.
And that's something that, we have to think about and pre.
Prepare for, and I don't Yeah.
Know in the, some kind of, you want them to be as independent as possible.
(27:04):
Yet, because of being on the spectrum it's, oh God, it's just, I what was my question originally? My God.
Oh, just about letting someone have 100% accountability for themselves.
Yeah.
What do you think? What are your thoughts? Yeah.
Like how do walk with my son with that kind of mindset, right? Knowing that like evil.
(27:33):
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think first it's like.
I, I fundamentally believe our job as parents, right? Is like we were, all of us given this incredible blessing, right? But it's like somebody gave you a seed and you don't know what it's gonna grow into, right? Yeah.
And you have to stay dialed in and connected enough to know what this particular seed is needing and growing into, right? What does it look like to nurture this? And right.
(28:03):
You might be like, oh, I think it's actually gonna be a redwood, and then, oh, just kidding.
It's a Japanese maple.
These need different things.
I need to pay attention.
And we can do a lot of damage if we keep going down the path of, oh, this is a redwood and I will only do this.
That kind of rigidity in parenting, I think is a recipe for disaster.
And with kids on the spectrum, 10 times more.
(28:25):
And so as I think about like this, what I really wanna understand is who is my son right now, right? What are, what is he most excited about it in the world? What are, what's the, where is his growth edge, right? Like a couple months ago, his growth edge was like all of a sudden, like a, a switch flipped, and he wanted to finally learn how to tie his shoes.
(28:49):
Like he had never, like any other time that I tried to teach that he'd basically show me in a lot of different ways that he did not wanna learn that.
Do you know what I mean? Yes.
And I was like, cool.
I'm that I don't think this will hurt you not knowing how to do this right now.
And so I, I was willing to be patient in that context.
And now he knows how to tie his shoes and he's good at it and he loves it.
(29:12):
You know what I mean? And now he has a hundred percent responsibility over that.
You know what I mean? There's other things like.
Whether it's learning how to hey, we're gonna learn about washing clothes, and we're gonna learn about some hygiene stuff and like whatever else we're doing.
I'm trying to stay in tune with where he is in the mixture of his ability, his desire, and the growth edge of where he's actually at.
(29:40):
And it doesn't mean I'm gonna get that right all the time.
But if I'm in that frame set, yeah.
Then it gives us a really healthy approach.
Yeah.
And that, that is true of all children, right? Yeah.
What you were saying, I was thinking like we, yeah.
That sounds, for how to parent in general.
(30:04):
Yeah.
Yeah, I have found that command and control is just not a great way to do family.
Oh God.
I've never.
I tried it.
I don't even think I could.
Yeah.
No.
I don't mean like me.
Ha.
I have tried it.
I was the recipient of it at various points in my life, I see.
(30:27):
Yeah.
And yeah, as someone who does not like to be commanded and controlled.
What does it look like to yeah to raise a little human.
And it doesn't mean, obviously there's things we do command for Hey, don't run out in the street.
Okay, cool.
We're learning these parameters, but a lot of the time it's not in that life or death framework, but we still bring life or death energy to it, Oh my gosh, that's, yes.
(30:56):
That, that, oh man, that's so true.
And that is so damaging and just like stressful, just just not it, and you, it doesn't have to be that way.
Oh my God.
It does not.
(31:16):
Yeah.
Okay.
We've gone over time.
Of course.
Yeah.
This has been wonderful.
Yeah.
Yes.
This has been incredible.
Thank you.
So it's, so enjoyed our conversation.
Yeah.
(31:37):
I'm so glad that you are writing a book or have written a book.
Yeah the book is out.
You can get it on Amazon right now.
Yeah.
Get it on Amazon right now.
Yeah.
No Elevator to Everest.
And it's all about how to shift from survive to thrive.
(31:57):
Oh.
Even if you're in a challenging context.
That's so needed, especially in this moment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of people are hurting right now.
I And why? Why? We don't need it.
(32:17):
No, no.
It would be amazing if like we had a national chill out movement.
If everyone's y'all we're gonna take the next four years, we're just gonna chill.
We're just gonna, we're gonna lower the intensity.
We're all gonna get more sleep.
It's gonna be great.
Let's do that.
(32:37):
Yeah.
Oh man.
We, that's why you have to keep going and doing the work that you're doing and you have to thank you and you would anyway, but you have to.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it has been.
(32:58):
The Corner to Corner Work, that's the name of our nonprofit.
It has been such an incredible journey.
And what we're working on next is launching 10,000 of these underestimated entrepreneurs in and around Nashville and then working on a national platform to bring it to every city in America.
(33:19):
So yeah, hell yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, 'cause at the end of the day, I so much of our poverty alleviation work puts, like an extra $2 into somebody's salary or wages.
But like when you're living in a city, like an extra three grand in the family, budget is not something you're gonna feel.
(33:39):
You're gonna be like, the price of eggs alone ate that up.
You know what I mean? And an adjustment in my rent.
Whereas if you learn the tools of creating a business that you own, right? Like then you have infinite upside instead of waiting for somebody else to, be like, here's two bucks.
(33:59):
Like we have graduates who sorry.
Last little story.
I know we're over time, but we had a school teacher here in Nashville, right? She's poured out her life for the kids in our city, and as she's looking to send her own son to college, she's like, where's that money gonna come from? And so she came to corner to launch a solopreneur, right? Like a side hustle.
(34:21):
Using the recipes she learned as a little girl in her grandma's kitchen.
I.
Right.
Oh my gosh.
And if you hear her tell these stories of being a 6-year-old and tying on the first apron and all this you're like crying and also hungry, the way she describes the food.
And her goal was $10,000.
In year one.
3000 of overhead, $7,000 to start this college savings fund.
(34:45):
That's a real bump into that savings.
Yeah.
And by, by the end of the year, I found out from our team that she'd done over 36,000.
Stop it.
And I called her, I was like, what, 10 K to 36 K? What was the story? And she said I heard that TSU, like one of our historically black colleges here in Nashville.
The Tennessee State University.
(35:06):
She was like, I heard that they were looking for a new caterer for their marching band.
And this is like a Grammy award-winning marching band that has 9,000 different types of drums, right? Like it's a big group of people.
Oh man.
And she used her marketing budget to cater for free.
And she took her grandma's caramel crumble cake, right? No.
Like her most delicious dish.
(35:28):
And she walked it up to the band director, waited for him to taste it.
And when his eyes were wide with how good this thing was she said, I heard you're looking for a new caterer.
And she closed the deal.
And then the, and we see this story over and over again.
I'm on the phone with her.
She's telling me this story.
And I was like, amazing.
Like way to grow.
(35:49):
Like way to crush it, right? Yeah.
And she goes, will, I'm just getting started.
And I was like, oh, what do you wanna do next? And she goes, Hey, do you guys think you could get me a pitch meeting at one of our area's, big grocery store chains for their regional buyer? And I was like, heck yeah, let's figure it out.
And we just had that pitch meeting, oh my gosh.
So it's like when people have the tools to thrive, they thrive.
(36:11):
Yeah.
That's what happens, yes.
And so this is, yeah, it's just seeing neighbors kick ass like they can when given the opportunity and to connect it back to autism or sensory processing disorder or all, that family of things.
(36:34):
It's the, I keep hearing people say we all thrive in the right circumstances.
Yep.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you have to, as a parent, know, be listening enough to where, what your child's trying to tell you.
Yes.
(36:56):
Yeah.
To create that environment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for having me.
This has been a blast.
Yeah, it has.
It really has.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
I'm gonna stop recording now.
Awesome.
welcome to how I Ally.
(00:02):
I am Lucinda Koza, and I'm joined by my third male guest ever.
Would you please introduce yourself and give a little bit of a bio backstory? Yeah.
Glad to be here and grateful to be the third male guest like this is.
(00:25):
Yeah, I feel honored.
Yeah.
Will Acuff I am outta Nashville, Tennessee.
Been here with my family for the last 18 years.
And the highlights of my bio would be that I was coming outta college, I was at night touring in a rock band, playing everywhere from the Apollo in Harlem to the Dallas Hard rock and everywhere in between.
(00:48):
And my claim to fame is I didn't get booed off the Apollo stage.
That's huge.
Yeah.
It was a big deal.
And then.
By day I was a research analyst in health policy at Duke University, and so I had this weird double life but was really like the band had become like an ego play for me, right? That's what it was about.
And I met this epidemiologist.
(01:09):
I.
From the University of North Carolina, who is an expert in the AIDS pandemic.
And he started leading like these Sunday afternoon conversations about global poverty and about the ins and outs and all the different kind of complicated factors that, make that what it is.
And then he led us on a trip to Nairobi.
This would've been in 2002.
(01:30):
And we all separated when we got there.
So I was staying with the Kenyan family.
On the edge of one of the worst slums in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it was the first time I'd seen anything like the AIDS pandemic, up close and personal.
And it's a cliche story to say middle class white boy has to learn that poverty is real by going to Africa, right? But it's absolutely what happened to me.
(01:54):
And coming home from that, it was like my worldview dissolved and I didn't even know I had a worldview.
Do you know what I mean? That was the minute I was like, oh my gosh.
And coming outta that, it wasn't a straight path, but coming outta that in the years to come, my wife and I started to go, what would it look like to actually, get what I would describe as a theology of neighbor.
(02:15):
Meaning how do you actually love neighbors? Not as like a one-off thing, but as a daily rhythm of your life.
And so 18 years ago, we moved into a historically low income neighborhood and started to do life.
And out of that, my wife started working at the men's prison.
Tiffany became a former offender job training specialist, helping justice involved neighbors come home.
(02:38):
I.
And then we were in their neighborhood, right? And so we just did life together and they were all kind and patient enough to help me, take my foot outta my mouth learn what I didn't know, right? Like the kindness of proximity.
And after about five years of that, we launched a nonprofit that was focused on economic opportunity.
(03:00):
And since then we've, now our work is about helping underestimated neighbors plan, start and grow small businesses.
And so we've now launched 1600 plus of these businesses and last year put 37 million back into the neighborhood economy.
Yeah.
So it's that's my day job.
(03:21):
And then I also have a new book out about doing life at home with disability.
So we could talk about either of those things.
I wanna talk about all of it.
Yes, I love it.
And how they do this.
Yeah.
Yeah, they do that all time.
The time for the audio.
(03:42):
I was interlacing my fingers when I said Do this.
Yeah.
There was a connectivity.
Yeah, Yeah.
And how, okay.
Okay.
Alright.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
First of all, that's incredible.
That's absolutely, that's drop jaw droppingly.
(04:05):
Incredible.
That number of six.
Yeah.
It's been a wild ride.
Yeah.
How do you, do, how do you feel? I feel like the luckiest person in the world, like I, this is, it has gone so far beyond my wildest dreams.
Like when my wife and I were hanging out on our front porch.
(04:27):
And we were in these conversations with neighbors who had all these amazing, passion and skills and drive, but there wasn't like a big enough bridge of opportunity to turn that, into something for the marketplace, right? Yes.
Our initial goal was like, could we launch like 10 businesses? What would that look like? And then, like right now we have a 3000 plus person wait list for this program.
(04:51):
Like it's Oh my nuts.
So yeah, I feel incredibly grateful to be doing the work that aligns with the purpose of my soul.
Oh that's like the definition of happiness is like when what you do and what you say is Yes.
Aligned with what you want or what you think, or what, yeah.
(05:16):
Yep.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's there, there's this quote.
I, of course cannot, I don't, I can't even think of who said it.
But it, it's something like it's something like the distribution of I'm gonna cry.
It's like the distribution of talent is.
(05:38):
Equal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the distribution of opportunity is not Yeah.
That's 100% my experience.
Yeah.
Wow.
So how, so when did you have chil? When did you guys have children? Yeah tiffany and I, even in our dating, we talked about wanting to adopt one day.
(06:01):
That was, part of our kind of foundational ideas about what will it look like to be us? And we chose to adopt our son when so he was an infant when we adopted him.
And then that whole experience made us go, wait a minute, I think we only wanna do adoption, so we ended up adopting twice.
(06:22):
So my son is now 13 years old.
And he's our child with disabilities autism among several other diagnoses, including some rare muscular disease stuff.
And then my daughter is typically developing and she's nine years old.
And we have a very, we are a very modern and eclectic family here in Nashville.
(06:45):
Yeah.
That's lovely.
Yeah.
So I don't, I have so many directions I wanna go.
Yeah.
I'm here for it.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
(07:06):
Okay.
I'm just, I'm gonna go this direction.
Okay.
So when did you, so I'm going to give personal so how soon in, in your son's life.
Was he diagnosed or did you have him evaluated? Yeah.
(07:29):
Yeah.
So our journey really first began, he was our first child.
And first time parents, you don't, you just don't know things, right? There's no way for you to know things, right? I don't care what book you're reading or what, like YouTube thing you're watching, right? Being a parent is as one friend put it, he said, I could try to explain scuba diving to you, but if you've never even been in a pool, you won't really have the frame of reference.
(07:53):
And I've always found that a useful idea.
And we probably would've known sooner had he been our second child or whatever, but our, so our journey really began where around age two and a half, he stopped sleeping through the night and not just one or two times, that fuzzy thing, that happens with young parents often, but it was, days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to years.
(08:14):
Multiple sleep studies at Vanderbilt University here in Nashville, surgeries to improve oxygen intake, like all the things.
But it didn't.
Changed the fact that he was still like up, right? Two nights out of 10 he'd sleep, but then those other times we were up and engaged and.
So that began the journey of diagnosis.
(08:36):
And at first it was things like, oh wait, there might be a cognitive thing here.
It's hard to tell.
Or there might just be a learning delay or there might be a language disorder, sensory processing.
Like you go through all the things.
And parents who've been on this path, no.
Like the diagnostic world is not like a clean, simple checkbox.
(08:57):
It is a very messy journey.
Where you're often you're never given like a all right, we figured it out and here's the playbook.
Go do this.
Yeah.
It's much more, you're like, oh, we got a little bit more idea over here and a little bit more over here.
And so it was around age five and a half that we got the official, a SD autism, diagnosis.
(09:21):
And again since then, like we've continued.
To get different diagnoses related to other parts of his life and his wellbeing.
And most recently, a couple years ago glycogen storage disease, which is neuromuscular genetic disease in the rare disease category.
So we're our family has been dynamically affected both by neurodiversity, issues and opportunities.
(09:44):
And yeah.
Like physical disabilities.
Yeah and it has been both the most wonderfully challenging thing that I could have ever imagined.
And has been like I cannot fathom that I'd be having a life of this much joy.
If it hadn't happened.
That's so beautiful.
(10:07):
Oh, someone that I interviewed recently actually said that joy comes from growth, which comes from.
Stress.
So I, yeah, I imagine that's, I think that's true.
(10:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think, I used to think that like joy and suffering were mutually exclusive or something.
And I don't think that's true.
I actually think that there are ways to thrive in the midst of what we're going through.
Rather than waiting for some day where it's all fixed or something.
(10:49):
You know what I mean? Yes.
Yeah.
And yeah.
So in our journey it was not, I don't mean to paint a rosy picture where we figured it out in two years or something like that.
Not at all.
This has been a decade plus of unfolding.
And we, my wife and I, we've consistently.
Hit walls that then showed us that was the moment that we needed to level up our skillset and do more work internally ourselves so we could show up in better health for our kids.
(11:20):
And so it became way less about getting, my son.
Treatment and became way more about oh no.
Oh, I just touched some trauma in my own life, huh? Ooh, I need to do the work of healing there so I can show up in a more loving, tender hearted whole presence kind of way for my son.
(11:41):
Oh man.
Can you give an example? Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Let's get really, I'll get really practical and this is like a big part of this is the story of the book No Elevator to Everest, where I had a framework growing up and I think this is really common, especially, maybe in America, but it's like I learned how to do work out here, like outside of my body.
(12:06):
There's a problem, solve it.
So my whole framework was problem solve, and then at home my child was not responding to problem solve, right? And then in the face of that, and I have permission from Tiffany, my wife, to talk about this, but, in her own trauma journey, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD.
(12:27):
And had acute clinical depression, bouts that would be hard for her to get out of bed, and I had the same, I'm gonna problem solve my wife too, right? So now there's two, two problem solve patterns that, by the way, that is not how relationships work.
Yeah.
Like that's not how humans work, right? We're meant to be known and enjoyed.
(12:49):
And so it, I, it hit a breaking point.
Where my wife found some really good trauma a trauma intensive place here outside of Nashville.
We call it trauma camp in our family.
And she went to trauma camp.
That's great.
And she came home and I saw like new Seeds of Hope for her.
And like a new tool set.
(13:10):
And she was like, you have to go too.
And I was like.
Aren't we therapized enough? Was my gut reaction and never a good sign if you're inventing words to debate your partner.
That's a recipe for disaster.
But my wife, she is, she, my wife is a badass, and she was like no, you have to go, and so I went, and day one I was there with all the arrogance in the world, right? I'm here to get a framework to help fix my wife, right? All that kind of nonsense.
(13:40):
But by the end, this place was so good and so skilled that by the end of day two I was cracked open, like weeping, knowing I was there for me and being taught tools to connect with myself with compassion and curiosity.
And it completely changed everything.
And then coming home from that, I was going back to a challenging context, right? In a lot of ways, an intense context.
(14:07):
And so the question then became if this was just a mountaintop moment, it'll ultimately be worthless.
I need to live this way every day, right? And so I started looking at my own life as a joy lab.
Like, how could I create more joy every day? And so you ask like practically how that plays out, right? One thing that I needed to do was create space every morning to connect with myself before I just went about my day.
(14:33):
And my son with the sleep disorder.
All the things, there's plenty of reasons not to get up earlier.
Yeah.
Or to try to carve back the sleep, but I said no.
On average, on good days, he's waking up at five.
Okay.
I can start to go to bed earlier.
I can move a coffee maker to the bedroom.
I can set my alarm at four.
(14:55):
I can move a chair next to the window, and I can make that cup of coffee.
I can sit in that chair and I can move towards myself with curiosity and compassion by wondering what am I feeling the most right now? Because when we wake up in the morning, none of us wake up neutral.
Like we're already flooded by the thing we saw on the news the night before, or the conversation before bed.
(15:18):
That didn't go how we thought it would go.
All that stuff is just like right there.
Yeah.
And most of the time I would just stuff all that and try to go about my day, right? Or stuff, all that.
And then go try to care and be present with this dynamic kiddo, and it was a recipe for burnout and disaster.
Yes.
And emotional disconnection with self.
(15:38):
And so a really practical way was like taking that first 10 minutes of the day to do like a, what I call an emotional trailhead exercise.
Which is just like you'd walk a trail into the forest, right? What is the biggest thing I'm feeling right now? And can I move towards it with curiosity and compassion? So it might be, oh man, we've got that doctor's appointment today, and I'm really worried that they're not gonna have an answer for us.
(16:07):
And what will that mean? And then as I get curious that I go, oh, I'm believing that if they don't have an answer, then we're just stuck.
And then I'll be able to ask myself, wait a minute, will, have you talked to every doctor in the universe? No, I actually haven't.
Okay, cool.
So is it possible that there's another doctor if this one doesn't pan out? You know what actually it is, and I can name and feel the fear and then release it.
(16:36):
And then when my son wakes up, I can move towards him with that processed already versus move towards him with that fear subconsciously running the show.
Yes.
That's a practical example.
That's such a good example because I, children with autism, people think.
(17:00):
There's this misconception that they don't feel as much or they don't feel empathy, but it's the opposite.
It's so the opposite.
Big feelers, they are sensitive.
They are.
That's why they can become overstimulated and overwhelmed.
(17:24):
And, because they are so sensitive they pick up on everything.
Absolutely.
Like they, I think about it like a, like I might have one antenna up.
You know what I mean? My son has 25 antenna, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:44):
And I and they're like reaching in places that you can't even see totally.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
I can't tell you how many moments we've had, like some kind of thing where my son was picking up on a sub current, like an emotional sub current, that he was 100% accurate about.
(18:10):
But had not been like, named and brought into the room, yeah, that's it.
It, yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
So that's, it becomes so important to process your own.
Or to regulate, to self-regulate.
(18:34):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I find, most of the time when I'm talking to parents who are faced with some of these unique, again, challenges and opportunities, that are on a journey of disability they're always looking at the kid.
And they have not yet had that moment of starting to look at themselves.
(18:57):
And I just, I find consistently that the minute you're able to turn towards self with a little love and compassion and curiosity, like there can be a paradigm shift that can really change things for families that is so important.
It's so important.
(19:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm curious what's your experience like? Do you find that people are mostly focused on kind of the problem solve kind of thing and that's the rhythm? Or are you finding more people turning towards self-awareness? I, okay.
I have found that usually I, I have found that there's one parent.
(19:41):
That is taking on the lion's share of all of it.
Including the self-awareness, the working on oneself and regulating the self and the where and it, I don't know if that.
(20:07):
Lets the other parent off the hook somehow.
Ooh.
Interesting.
Now we're into codependent patterns.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's, yeah.
I do think, part of my story is I'm a classic over functioner.
(20:28):
And learning how to not hero people who aren't asking me to hero them.
Oh, that's been a big growth thing.
But what it actually allows to happen is like other people to really thrive and flourish and take ownership of their own journey.
Yes, but woo, that's hard work.
(20:50):
'Cause you're stealing it from them in a way if you're saving them, quote unquote Yeah.
You're stealing their own journey.
Yeah.
And I think agency like believing that you know your partner and your child and what, and your fellow person.
(21:10):
Whoever you're talking to actually has agency and something beautiful to bring to the table, right to the city, to the neighborhood, to the family, whatever it is.
It might look different than your expecting or whatever, but that's more about you and your own judgment versus them and their own unique beauty, yeah.
(21:32):
Yes you're absolutely right.
And I've thought this about my father so many times because he is sick.
He has Parkinson's and I've been, in charge of his finances for a while and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And yeah.
I really felt like I had to take care of his emotions.
(21:52):
Yeah.
For a while.
Yeah.
And then I realized wait a second.
He's a grown ass man.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
What made you realize that was there a moment of awareness? Yes.
(22:13):
Yeah.
It was like I was a, I was afraid that something was gonna hurt his feelings.
Like I, I was afraid to tell him some truth, like like I, he had to move or he he something.
Yeah.
I was like I was like, horribly.
(22:37):
Terrified of hurting his feelings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I really, and then I thought this is the same man that HA was, has been my dad my whole life.
And went to work every day and drank whiskey in front of the TV at night and didn't Yeah.
(23:02):
This is that fucking guy.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna hurt his feelings.
And even if I do he can deal with it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
That was such that, that was such a huge release of a self-imposed burden.
(23:26):
Yeah.
That phrase self-imposed burden.
I think it's so yeah.
All of us on some level are carrying out uninvestigated stories, yeah.
And I found, at least for me, because I was, because through a lot of different rhythms with my own family of origin and everything else, like I learned basically figure it out, dude.
(23:49):
Like you better do all the things and then some if you want to feel safe, right? Yes.
It meant that I couldn't.
I like subconsciously I couldn't not hero, yes.
But after, like this, the healing trauma intensive I did, and like some of the work, like the internal work, realizing like, oh no, I need to show up with a hundred percent responsibility for my own physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing and allow others to have a hundred percent responsibility for theirs.
(24:24):
So it's not 50 50 and we're negotiating a percentage.
That's how I used to do life.
It's a hundred.
100.
Yes.
And that changed how, Tiffany and I parent.
So practical example and I'm here I'm using, there's a great thing that the drama triangle, it's a tool I love.
Where it's like hero, victim, villain, right? And sometimes we run the bases in those three roles in our relationships.
(24:49):
And like me as the hero, I come home say after work, and let's say my son's having a hard time and my wife's trying to help get him regulated, right? In the past, I would've just jumped in, taken over for her and tried to like, insert myself into the situation, and then she'd get mad, right? And she would play the villain role.
(25:10):
Will, why did you do that, right? And then I'd go from hero to victim.
Why won't you let me help you? You don't understand.
I'm just trying to help you.
And we and then she might run to hero and try to make me feel better.
And just like in this subconscious pattern all the time, and after all this, I might come into the same scenario, but I see this moment for Tiffany, and I'll go to her as a fellow grown ass adult, right? And I'll say, Hey, could I be helpful right now? And she gets to say, yes, actually, would you jump in? Or, you know what? I'm good.
(25:47):
Hey, would you go check on our daughter? I.
Who's in a room or everybody's fine.
This is just life.
This will take me 10, 15 minutes.
Would you please go start dinner? And it's a completely different rhythm, yeah.
And I'm not trying to say we get it right all the time, but we get it right a whole lot more now that we even know it was there.
(26:08):
Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
That's.
Great.
That is great.
It is really helpful.
Yeah.
Wow.
So I wonder how much that shows up with your son, because obviously.
(26:39):
Hopefully you, you and your wife won't be around at some point and he will.
And that's something that, we have to think about and pre.
Prepare for, and I don't Yeah.
Know in the, some kind of, you want them to be as independent as possible.
(27:04):
Yet, because of being on the spectrum it's, oh God, it's just, I what was my question originally? My God.
Oh, just about letting someone have 100% accountability for themselves.
Yeah.
What do you think? What are your thoughts? Yeah.
Like how do walk with my son with that kind of mindset, right? Knowing that like evil.
(27:33):
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think first it's like.
I, I fundamentally believe our job as parents, right? Is like we were, all of us given this incredible blessing, right? But it's like somebody gave you a seed and you don't know what it's gonna grow into, right? Yeah.
And you have to stay dialed in and connected enough to know what this particular seed is needing and growing into, right? What does it look like to nurture this? And right.
(28:03):
You might be like, oh, I think it's actually gonna be a redwood, and then, oh, just kidding.
It's a Japanese maple.
These need different things.
I need to pay attention.
And we can do a lot of damage if we keep going down the path of, oh, this is a redwood and I will only do this.
That kind of rigidity in parenting, I think is a recipe for disaster.
And with kids on the spectrum, 10 times more.
(28:25):
And so as I think about like this, what I really wanna understand is who is my son right now, right? What are, what is he most excited about it in the world? What are, what's the, where is his growth edge, right? Like a couple months ago, his growth edge was like all of a sudden, like a, a switch flipped, and he wanted to finally learn how to tie his shoes.
(28:49):
Like he had never, like any other time that I tried to teach that he'd basically show me in a lot of different ways that he did not wanna learn that.
Do you know what I mean? Yes.
And I was like, cool.
I'm that I don't think this will hurt you not knowing how to do this right now.
And so I, I was willing to be patient in that context.
And now he knows how to tie his shoes and he's good at it and he loves it.
(29:12):
You know what I mean? And now he has a hundred percent responsibility over that.
You know what I mean? There's other things like.
Whether it's learning how to hey, we're gonna learn about washing clothes, and we're gonna learn about some hygiene stuff and like whatever else we're doing.
I'm trying to stay in tune with where he is in the mixture of his ability, his desire, and the growth edge of where he's actually at.
(29:40):
And it doesn't mean I'm gonna get that right all the time.
But if I'm in that frame set, yeah.
Then it gives us a really healthy approach.
Yeah.
And that, that is true of all children, right? Yeah.
What you were saying, I was thinking like we, yeah.
That sounds, for how to parent in general.
(30:04):
Yeah.
Yeah, I have found that command and control is just not a great way to do family.
Oh God.
I've never.
I tried it.
I don't even think I could.
Yeah.
No.
I don't mean like me.
Ha.
I have tried it.
I was the recipient of it at various points in my life, I see.
(30:27):
Yeah.
And yeah, as someone who does not like to be commanded and controlled.
What does it look like to yeah to raise a little human.
And it doesn't mean, obviously there's things we do command for Hey, don't run out in the street.
Okay, cool.
We're learning these parameters, but a lot of the time it's not in that life or death framework, but we still bring life or death energy to it, Oh my gosh, that's, yes.
(30:56):
That, that, oh man, that's so true.
And that is so damaging and just like stressful, just just not it, and you, it doesn't have to be that way.
Oh my God.
It does not.
(31:16):
Yeah.
Okay.
We've gone over time.
Of course.
Yeah.
This has been wonderful.
Yeah.
Yes.
This has been incredible.
Thank you.
So it's, so enjoyed our conversation.
Yeah.
(31:37):
I'm so glad that you are writing a book or have written a book.
Yeah the book is out.
You can get it on Amazon right now.
Yeah.
Get it on Amazon right now.
Yeah.
No Elevator to Everest.
And it's all about how to shift from survive to thrive.
(31:57):
Oh.
Even if you're in a challenging context.
That's so needed, especially in this moment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of people are hurting right now.
I And why? Why? We don't need it.
(32:17):
No, no.
It would be amazing if like we had a national chill out movement.
If everyone's y'all we're gonna take the next four years, we're just gonna chill.
We're just gonna, we're gonna lower the intensity.
We're all gonna get more sleep.
It's gonna be great.
Let's do that.
(32:37):
Yeah.
Oh man.
We, that's why you have to keep going and doing the work that you're doing and you have to thank you and you would anyway, but you have to.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it has been.
(32:58):
The Corner to Corner Work, that's the name of our nonprofit.
It has been such an incredible journey.
And what we're working on next is launching 10,000 of these underestimated entrepreneurs in and around Nashville and then working on a national platform to bring it to every city in America.
(33:19):
So yeah, hell yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, 'cause at the end of the day, I so much of our poverty alleviation work puts, like an extra $2 into somebody's salary or wages.
But like when you're living in a city, like an extra three grand in the family, budget is not something you're gonna feel.
(33:39):
You're gonna be like, the price of eggs alone ate that up.
You know what I mean? And an adjustment in my rent.
Whereas if you learn the tools of creating a business that you own, right? Like then you have infinite upside instead of waiting for somebody else to, be like, here's two bucks.
(33:59):
Like we have graduates who sorry.
Last little story.
I know we're over time, but we had a school teacher here in Nashville, right? She's poured out her life for the kids in our city, and as she's looking to send her own son to college, she's like, where's that money gonna come from? And so she came to corner to launch a solopreneur, right? Like a side hustle.
(34:21):
Using the recipes she learned as a little girl in her grandma's kitchen.
I.
Right.
Oh my gosh.
And if you hear her tell these stories of being a 6-year-old and tying on the first apron and all this you're like crying and also hungry, the way she describes the food.
And her goal was $10,000.
In year one.
3000 of overhead, $7,000 to start this college savings fund.
(34:45):
That's a real bump into that savings.
Yeah.
And by, by the end of the year, I found out from our team that she'd done over 36,000.
Stop it.
And I called her, I was like, what, 10 K to 36 K? What was the story? And she said I heard that TSU, like one of our historically black colleges here in Nashville.
The Tennessee State University.
(35:06):
She was like, I heard that they were looking for a new caterer for their marching band.
And this is like a Grammy award-winning marching band that has 9,000 different types of drums, right? Like it's a big group of people.
Oh man.
And she used her marketing budget to cater for free.
And she took her grandma's caramel crumble cake, right? No.
Like her most delicious dish.
(35:28):
And she walked it up to the band director, waited for him to taste it.
And when his eyes were wide with how good this thing was she said, I heard you're looking for a new caterer.
And she closed the deal.
And then the, and we see this story over and over again.
I'm on the phone with her.
She's telling me this story.
And I was like, amazing.
Like way to grow.
(35:49):
Like way to crush it, right? Yeah.
And she goes, will, I'm just getting started.
And I was like, oh, what do you wanna do next? And she goes, Hey, do you guys think you could get me a pitch meeting at one of our area's, big grocery store chains for their regional buyer? And I was like, heck yeah, let's figure it out.
And we just had that pitch meeting, oh my gosh.
So it's like when people have the tools to thrive, they thrive.
(36:11):
Yeah.
That's what happens, yes.
And so this is, yeah, it's just seeing neighbors kick ass like they can when given the opportunity and to connect it back to autism or sensory processing disorder or all, that family of things.
(36:34):
It's the, I keep hearing people say we all thrive in the right circumstances.
Yep.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you have to, as a parent, know, be listening enough to where, what your child's trying to tell you.
Yes.
(36:56):
Yeah.
To create that environment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for having me.
This has been a blast.
Yeah, it has.
It really has.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
I'm gonna stop recording now.
Awesome.
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