From Problem-Solving to Abiding Joy: Will Acuff’s Daily Joy Practices

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
the people in our life are notproblems to solve, but they're

(00:02):
people to know and enjoy.
So what would it look like to step in to,to full presence in the midst of that?
You know, to ride out the, theintense moments and then be there
to hold them after, Hey, I can'tclimb in there with you, it's yours.
but I can be here right on the edge of it.

(00:23):
I'm not going anywhere.
I can hold this space with you andyou tell me what would be supportive.
I'm not running away, butit's not mine to solve.
Right.
and holding that dynamictension in our relationship.

(00:48):
What if the path to Joy isn'ta mountaintop moment, but
a daily deliberate climb?
In this episode of Seek GoCreate the leadership journey.
We sit down with Will Acuff, co-founder ofthe Nashville nonprofit corner to corner
and author of No Elevator to Everest.
Will's story is one of resilience,faith, and the pursuit of joy.

(01:08):
Amidst life's challenges fromsupporting underestimated entrepreneurs
to navigating personal trials, heoffers insights into building a life
rooted in purpose and community.
us as we explore how intentionalleadership and unwavering faith can
transform not only our own lives, butalso the lives of those around us.

(01:29):
Will welcome to seek, go create.
Thank you so much for having me, Tim.
It is a joy to be with you today.
It is a joy to be with you too.
You know what I'm excited about is thatwe kind of got started with one of the
techniques in your book, which is we justkind of took a few really deep breaths
Mm-hmm.
man, it helped me.
Oh, absolutely, man.
it always tells my body that I am hereright now and I'm present to this moment.

(01:54):
You know, lets me fully show up as,one friend of mine says, be here now.
Be somewhere else later, you know?
I just, I realized maybe I go, go, go andI'm, not fully breathing and I had a lot
going on this morning with, a company.
I'm doing some work for now,and I'm sure had a lot going on.
It's just kind of good toslow down and say, okay, it's

(02:15):
Tim and Will for 60 minutes.
Let's have some fun here.
Yeah, absolutely.
go with it.
I got a bunch of stuff here.
We're gonna have fun.
But first off, let's kind of do the,jumping into the deep end of the
pool question that I like to do, andthat is, and we give you a choice.
start off with the what do youdo, question, or are you Pick

(02:38):
it and just start answering.
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna answerthe who I am in the world as
I, you know, think of myself.
I would say I am, an image bearerof the most high God of who is
abiding in the living spirit of God.
And out of that, I am alignedwith my family, my wonderful

(03:01):
wife, Tiffany of 20 plus years.
My kids, 13-year-old sonand 9-year-old daughter.
I, I live my life as much as I'm possible,grounded in the love of my father, so that
I can live out of that towards my family.
Then out of that, towards the workI'm called to in the world, right?
Like in alignment, and all ofthat when taken together, right?

(03:23):
Alignment with God, alignmentwith self, others, and with
my work is what I describe as,
Being played in tune, right?
Like, it feels like, oh,this is who I am meant to be.
Let's go.
And so that's who I am in the world.
I'm a person who, strives to moreand more live out of that place and

(03:43):
that peace every moment of every day.
That's good.
So how do you know ifthat's working well for you?
Oh, dude, you can tell in seconds.
Yeah, no joke.
can you tell if it's working or canyou tell more if it's not working?
Which one do you do better at?
so I would say at this point inmy life, I do both really well.

(04:03):
but that took a lot of work and alot of getting my butt kicked, right?
Like, I don't want this to sound,overly easy or overly simplified, right?
and what I mean by this is somethinglike, I believe all of us are uniquely
called to be where we are and dothe thing that we were made to do.
And to the extent that we get outof alignment with that, right?

(04:26):
We feel it as like a drainand as stress and as pressure.
Right?
You almost feel like that clinched fistenergy, you know what I'm talking about?
And we start saying things to ourselveslike, I must, I have to, right?
That's kind of how life feelswhen we're out of that alignment.
and when we're in that place of abidingtrust that I'm kind of pointing to what

(04:49):
it feels like is, ooh, I get to right.
and it feels like flow instead of grind.
and the only way I know to getbetter at being, intentional about
detecting that is through, walkingout a daily practice of stillness.
and then doing check-insthroughout the day.

(05:09):
You know, back in the day if you hadsaid, Hey, will, would you spend 10
minutes of prayer and meditation?
I would've been like, get outta here.
I got too much to do.
You know, fast forward nowadays,like I will sit for an hour and feel
like it was too little, you know?
but then during the day, Iwill feel it go, oh, huh.
That meeting went a little left when Ithought it was gonna go a little right.

(05:30):
And now I'm feeling this way about it, andI'm starting to tell myself this story.
Huh?
This feels off.
What do I need to know about this?
How do I get realigned?
And it happens like that.
So people will hear this and theymight think that you have mastered
this and have it all figured out.

(05:51):
No, no.
That is not what I'm trying to say.
my wife sometimes said, your tonemakes you seem as if you know it all.
I said, ah, I don't know whatto do about my tone, man.
I'm just, don't knowhow to tone that down.
Uhhuh.
as that.
But how, how would you, if you goback maybe 10 years, you said you're
Mm-hmm.
mid forties,
Mm-hmm.
years and give yourself a grade onthe description you just gave, and now

(06:12):
give yourself a grade now, either on ascale of one to 10 or an A, B, C, D, F.
Yeah.
Totally.
about 10 years ago in my life, we were,my wife and I were in the journey of,
parenthood, we adopted our son, and aroundactually a little over 10 years ago.
That was when we realized that our lifewas taking a different turn, it started
with our son not sleeping throughthe night, not for a couple days, but

(06:36):
rather weeks than months, than years.
And that was our introduction to thefact that we were gonna be a family
that was touched by disability, right?
so if I go back in my head to thatpoint, what I see is, a young man who
only had one way of doing life andthat was find a problem and solve it.
That was my entire framework, right?

(06:58):
And so there were some really goodthings about that, maybe effective in
a lot of different areas, but when itcomes to how you navigate life with
a child with disabilities, that is alosing recipe, And a recipe for burnout.
I did not know at all atthat point in my life.
How to do what I would describeas more internal work, Like
self-awareness, like what am I feeling?

(07:20):
What am I believing as true?
And then how is thataffecting my behaviors?
Right?
I had no framework for that.
My only answer was when in doubt do more.
In fact, at at that point inmy life, that was my password
for my laptop do more, right?
2025 or 2015 or whatever year, right?
And I, and I updated that passwordevery year with just a new year, right?

(07:44):
fast forward.
Now what's different ismy context is the same.
Right.
I still have dynamically challengingsituations, but every single day I
start the day by getting, still gettingcurious, and approaching my inner life
with a sense of compassion and curiosity.

(08:05):
and then I might still doall that activity that day.
You know, I might still problemsolve, but I'm doing it from
a different place, right?
And I don't mean to say that I liveperfectly in that space all day, I
mean, this weekend had a challenging,you know, situation at home.
And I allowed myself to go, ohyeah, I feel awful right now.

(08:25):
Oh, what am I feeling?
I'm feeling a lot of sorrow.
Hmm, yeah.
Do I want to repair what'sbringing about that sorrow?
Or is there something I need to let go ofand I need to mourn the loss of it, right?
And the difference now is I nevereven would've had that language.
Does that make sense?
You get to a certain place and younever feel sadness anymore, right?

(08:47):
that is nonsense.
you were made with a body that producesemotions, like, welcome to humanity.
Yeah.
I kept seeing the word joy pop up and Iwanna talk about that in just a moment.
But, I wanna tell you thescripture that came to mind as
I was doing my research on you.
Yeah.
I told you this a little bitright before we hit record week.

(09:07):
I was traveling, we weremoving RV from Arizona.
We're in Colorado now visiting grandparentgrandkids, and then we're on our way
up to the Black Hills of South Dakotato spend a good bit of the summer.
Awesome.
to a few podcasts and I don't knowhow I did this, but I listened to
one PO podcast you were a gueston, and I think it was right around

(09:29):
when Covid started, like it was
Hmm.
ago,
Yeah.
your first book or something with cornerto corner, which we're gonna talk about
Yeah.
I.
Yeah.
But then I listened to another oneright after that about your new book.
I've got it here.
We're gonna be talking about it more.
no Elevator to Everest.
And I saw a big differencein just your tone to use

(09:50):
Mm-hmm.
words.
and then I want to give this scripture,and then I want us to start getting
into the, to some details here on some
Yeah.
The scripture that came to mindis the scripture that Jesus or the
teaching that Jesus has at the tailend of the Sermon on the Mount.
I've always been fascinated by this,and I listen to the Sermon on the Mount
quite a bit sometimes in my meditation.

(10:11):
Mm-hmm.
to the Audible sermon on the Mount.
It's 15 minutes, by the way.
It's a great, it's a
Hmm.
meditation.
he's talking about the, thesubtitle is Built on the Rock.
He says, therefore, whoeverhears these sayings.
Of mine and does them.
I will liken him to a wise manwho built his house on the rock
Hmm.
and the rains descended.
The floods came and the winds blewand beat on that house, and it did not

(10:32):
fall for, it was founded on the rock.
But everyone who hears these sayingsand does not do them will be like a
foolish man who built this house onthe sand and the rains descended,
the floods came and the winds blewand beat on the house and it fell.
And great was its fall.
Hmm.
Here's what came to me afterprobably about a hundred times of
meditating on the sermon on the mount.

(10:54):
The range came, the floods came,and the winds came to both people.
Yeah.
The situations were the same.
Mm-hmm.
that was different, and tome, will, that's what jumped
out at me about your story.
Would that
Thank you.

(11:14):
Yeah, man.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you Tim, so much.
That is such a kind word.
yeah.
I would say that.
That is accurate.
My, my story definitely, like thecontext of my life hasn't changed, right?
In a lot of ways the rainand the winds, right?
Still happening, but with thefoundation of rest, right?

(11:37):
And like, rest in the hands of my makerwho is doing something beautiful, right?
Like there's a certain typeof piece that comes with that.
Like when, you know, the foundationisn't going anywhere, right?
You can be in the middle of yourliving room on a big, rainy,
blustery day and make yourselfa cup of tea, grab a good book.

(11:59):
You know what I mean?
but if your foundation is such thatyou always have to be shoring it up.
Like it is a invitation into alife of frantic activity, that is
designed, you know, I think allof us, you know, this goes back to
my theory of like how humans form.
I think all of us when we're kids,we ask the question, am I safe?

(12:21):
And at some point in ourdevelopment, we say, no.
Right?
I need to figure out how to get safe.
And you know, what we chase after that,I think, can go a million different
ways, But what the Lord is callingus into is to go, Hey, you are always
safe and you're safe right now.
And then meanwhile, our lizard brainmight freak out and go, no, I'm not safe.

(12:44):
Right?
The rain's coming and he's saying,no, no, no, no, no, I got you.
I got you.
so yeah, I think I'll, I'll take that.
That's an encouraging word, Tim.
So you, used the word abide at leasttwice in this 13 minutes that we've
been talking, and you just use the wordrest you're a pastor's kid, grew up in

(13:06):
church, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We're talking about that in just a moment,by the way, one of the reasons is the way
the church dealt with money that I noticed
Hmm.
book we'll talk aboutthat if we get to it,
Yeah.
some people are, might be listening inand go, you know, that word abide, I don't
Mm-hmm.
That sounds a bit churchy
Yeah.
rest sounds like justtaking a lot of naps.

(13:26):
I don't know that I understand that.
a little bit more on how, maybeexplain it to a second or third grader.
What does the word
Yeah.
That was great.
to you now?
Yeah, for sure.
so the first, I'd make a clarificationthat, when I say the word abide, I
don't mean a ceasing of activity.
I think sometimes we have this falsedichotomy that you're either abiding,

(13:51):
which looks like you doing nothing, wemight even say like, you being lazy or
that old image, you know, that story oflike the person in the flood and they're
standing on the roof waiting, praying, Godsend me some rescue, and the boat comes,
they say, no, no, I'm waiting on God.
you know that story, right?
And so when I say abide, I'm notsaying a ceasing of activity.

(14:12):
What I am saying is where youractivity is coming from, right?
And to me the word abide is where isthe ground of yourself resting in?
And to explain it to a second grader, I'dsay, Hey, are you doing this homework?
Because in order to get a goodgrade, you've gotta do this.

(14:32):
And a good grade tellsyou who your identity is.
It tells you something core about you.
You're the kid who performs well,And there's, uh, you know, in
Tennessee we have a really intensethird grade test to mark if you're
going into fourth grade, right?
These kids get freaked out, man, right?
Like it is massive stress on someof our third grade population.

(14:53):
and you can easily, you could ask 'emthis question, they go, yeah, man,
if I don't do good on my third gradetest, I'm not the kid I thought I was.
Do you know what I mean?
That's not abiding, right?
so when I say abide, I don't justnecessarily mean it as a churchy word.
I mean it as a who, who are you?

(15:13):
Where is your identity coming from?
What platform do you stand uponto do your work in the world?
You know?
And I even mean that withrelationships, right?
Like if you're in a relationship andyou're like, I need that person to
behave like this so I can be happy.
Oof recipe for disaster.

(15:34):
That is the opposite of abiding, right?
If instead, you're coming froma place of, oh, you know what?
I'm good.
I'm loved, I'm cared for, and out ofthat piece, I can meet this person.
Oh, man, something specialis gonna happen there.
Yeah.
And Will, one of the things youbrought up earlier is, a lot of
things I think began changing foryou when you and Tiffany adopted,

(15:57):
Yeah.
I think a lot of parents, they gofrom, you know, you're, you know,
when you're single and then youget married, still sort of single.
You're just with another adult,
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
Dual.
Dual income.
No kids.
Yeah.
and to me that still doesn't count.
You can still be, I'll call it selfish, or
Mm-hmm.
still control most of your world,even though we know we can't control

(16:20):
Oh, yeah.
when a child arrives,
Mm-hmm.
we're gonna discuss yourstory here in just a moment.
we're gonna kind of get rolling with that.
But when a child arrives, yourealize my words, how out of control
we probably are, and I know yours
Absolutely.
dimension to it.
I do think that part of ourjourney is realizing how little
control we really do have.
Mm-hmm.

(16:40):
A younger age, I think Ithought I could control and bend
everyone around me to my will
Yep.
and we just realizedwe're not in much control.
And I think abiding is, for me,has been a lot of just letting go
Mm-hmm.
control.
Yep.
theory I have, and this is gonna getus started on your journey that you've
been on, I actually believe that's aprocess that has at least one, maybe more

(17:06):
significant events along the way that get
Oh,
point.
So
absolutely.
having said that, I wanna talk alittle bit about Will, growing up
pastor's kid, man, I love talkingto pastor's kids and like finding
out all the issues they dealt with.
That's so
Uhhuh.
get into Corner to Corner and thenyour family to get into talking
about the book and all that.

(17:26):
what was revealed to you through the book.
So tell me what you want to aboutyour, you know, the early years.
Yeah.
So for context for me, I wasborn in Durham, North Carolina.
Like we were a southern family.
Mom and dad both fromCharlotte, North Carolina.
Both went to University of NorthCarolina, you know, back in the day.
so very southern right.

(17:47):
Coming out of college.
my dad was a campus minister forInterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Right.
and so he was, you know, doingcampus ministry at Duke and NC
State, and we were like thisyoung, Ministry family in Durham.
and he felt a call to be like a pastor.
Pastor, right?
Because campus ministers, they're kindof like sidekicks, you know, he wants to

(18:08):
go to seminary, do the full deal, right?
but so he ends up, taking our wholefamily up to New England for him to,
go to seminary and he, the plan wasgo up to the north and then come back
to the south where we're from, right?
and instead he got caught up in the churchplanting movement up in the northeast.
And think of church planters as thepeople who are most entrepreneurial

(18:30):
in the church world, right?
they are gonna start a new churchwhere there might be a community
that doesn't have one right.
Kind of vibe.
and so he started church in theoffice of a gas station in 1985.
The kind of place where like youbring your own folding chair and or
tambourine, right, was kind of the vibe.
and by the mid nineties had grownit to, on some Sundays there

(18:51):
were 1000, 2000 people there.
it was a wild ride.
And I think the joy of seeing thatfor me and probably my two brothers,
I have a younger sister, but shewas born when I was 11, so she grew
up with kind of a different versionof our family in a lot of ways.
But was that you could buildsomething in the world.
Like you could take a crazy swing witha ton of risk, Or what people perceive

(19:14):
as risk and do something awesome.
That was the upside.
I think the downside was, youknow, the family rhythms and my
dad and I have had a lot of goodconversation and healing around this.
This is no surprise, but backin that day, it was very much
the mission is the mission andthe family is kind of secondary.
Right.
And so I think a lot of my childhood,there was a sense of my parents

(19:39):
love me and care for me, and alsoI better figure it out, and so I
think that also helped, me and mybrothers we're all entrepreneurial.
We've all built stuff in ourstill building stuff, right?
So that was kinda my childhood.
And then I felt called to like,I'm gonna be a pastor, like my
dad, my senior year of high school.
And so I went to NC State big, youknow, state school, like at that

(20:03):
point, like 30,000 students becauseI wanted to see what ministry looked
like in a large secular environment.
It always seems silly to me towanna be in ministry and to go to
a place with only Christians orsomething, do you know what I mean?
Like, there's just toomuch echo chamber for me.
and so I go to that college.
And instead of being on a pathto seminary, I fall in love with

(20:25):
being in a rock and roll band.
I grew out my hair to my shoulders.
Like I'm talking Italiansoccer player hair, right?
learned how to be a lead guitaristand a songwriter and all the things.
coming outta college, I put a newband together and we started touring
everywhere from the Apollo in Harlem,all the way to the Dallas Hard Rock
and a bunch of crappy bars in between.

(20:46):
our high watermark.
I was a big Wilco fan.
We got to open up for Wilcoonce, you know, I was like,
I have made it, you know?
but what it started off asa sincere expression of my
creativity turned into an ego play.
Like I'm building thewill kingdom, if you will.
and I would've been on that path,Like I would've kept it going.
but God got ahold of me throughthis epidemiologist who was an

(21:10):
expert in the AIDS pandemic,This is early two thousands.
and this guy, made us meet at hishouse for six months to get ready
for a trip to Nairobi, right?
And so every week we'rereading like doctrinal things.
We're reading, globaleconomic papers, right?
What happens if the energyprice is pegged at this in North

(21:31):
America to Sub-Saharan Africa?
Like really complicated stuffthat I was just like a dumb
rock kid, you know what I mean?
Like, I felt like, I waslike, what is happening?
and so I go on this tripAnd we all split up, right?
So we weren't like staying ata hotel downtown kind of vibe.
I was staying with this Kenyan familyon the edge of one of the worst slums

(21:53):
in Sub-Saharan Africa, no running water.
it's a cliche story, like middleclass white boy has to go to Africa
to realize poverty's real, butit is 100% what happened to me.
And I came back from that, with myworldview blown up, and I didn't even
know I had a worldview until then.
and I felt nauseous, honestly.

(22:15):
Like how can this exist in the world?
And this isn't whatwe're all talking about.
How old
I was 22.
All right, so a couple quick questionsbefore we keep moving forward.
Was the rock star.
Era, well, we'll use the term era.
sure.
rockstar era?

(22:36):
Mm-hmm.
Was there any rebellion withthat, with the way you grew up?
Or was it just you like, I mean, see, I,man, I love me some good rock and roll and
Yeah,
the circus last night with ourgranddaughters and they lit
into some A CDC and I'm going,
yeah,
I
absolutely.
thunderstruck.
yeah,
I am wondering if, you know,growing up in a preacher's kid

(22:56):
family, I know there was a lot
yeah.
religion there, and I'm
Uhhuh.
your money tapes, your
Yeah, yeah,
stuff here in just a second.
But
yeah.
at all that you've looked backon and say, you know what, I
was just sort of rebelling justto, stick it to mom and dad.
Honestly, no.
my dad had also introduced me toled Zeppelin and Three Dog Night,
That's a
right?
And the Beatles, like the Rolling Stoneswere a bridge too far, I think, for him,

(23:20):
he needed the cleaner British invasion.
But I mean, it was Jimi Hendrix that mademe fall in love with guitar, you know?
I was like, if you can makethat sound with that thing,
I have to learn how to do it.
And so if anything, my parents werevery enthusiastic, like true story
my senior year of high school.
'cause I was determined to be thebest guitar player I knew, Like,

(23:41):
I've always been very goal oriented.
and so I spent a winter in Massachusettswhere I turned my parents' basement
into a Jimi Hendrix shrine.
Like I painted the entire door onthe inside to the basement with Jimi
Hendrix face from a cover of an album.
And then I locked myself in there and Ijust wood shed it on the guitar, you know?

(24:03):
So it wasn't much about rebellion,but what it became about was this
really strokes my ego, you know, and,and stand like playing guitar behind
your head in front of a thousandpeople losing their minds, right?
That is a uniquely goodfeeling in the world, right?
and so my own internal valuesalignment started to shift.

(24:27):
Does that make sense?
Like,
Yeah, it
yeah.
and that's a good self-awareness.
I realized that when I was doingsome things in business and I was
speaking in front of groups a lot,and I look at a lot of people that
are pastors and ministers, you know,
Mm-hmm.
all of a sudden this starts becoming thedeal instead of what's the real deal.
Totally.
and we can kind of get outta whack there.

(24:49):
there's something I wanna addressabout you growing up though,
that you had in your book.
I'm on, mean, I've got aphysical copy here so that
Yeah.
uh, page one 60 and Ijust highlighted this.
We are poor for Jesus, and thatis the right way to follow him.
Yeah.
and that was truthfully mychallenge with Southern.

(25:11):
I grew up in the south,outside of Atlanta, and I
was gonna make me some money
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
like the church supported that,which is one of the reasons when
after I got saved, I got suckedinto Prosperity Gospel, which has
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
liked it better
Yeah.
Yeah.
Totally.
need for that.
So we won't go
Yeah.

(25:31):
tell me about how you thoughtabout money as you went along
your path from an early age.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, so I think I'll fo first say.
most kids don't get like areally clear mon money lesson
from their parents, right?
It's mostly they pick it up throughwhat I would refer to as osmosis.

(25:52):
It's just kinda, they're picking it upin little bits and drips and drabs that
they feel or hear in the home, you know?
So, ooh, money is somethingto be scared of, right?
Or bills are always bad, right?
There's all sorts of ways thatI think we could pick that up.
And in my own childhood, what happenedfor me was, my parents very much so had

(26:14):
a sense of we are on mission for Jesus,which means, that we're gonna be broke.
Right.
And they didn't ever comeright out and straight up say
that, do you know what I mean?
But it was in, and again, I'vetalked to my, I love my mom and dad.
We have a wonderful relationship.
We've talked all about this stuff.
But like, there were moments,I mean, my mom would say things

(26:34):
like, oh, we would take that kindof trip, you know, referring to
another family, doing some kind ofski trip or something in the winter.
but we've made a decisionto follow Jesus so we can't.
Right.
and so it equated in my mind thatthere's only one way to follow Jesus.
Right.
and I think anytime you make a hardand fast rule about how to interact

(26:57):
with money, that's actually whenyou're in the most danger, wherever
you're landing on that rule.
Right?
If you're like, I should only be uberwealthy, and that's the only plan that
God has for me, Ooh, good luck, buddy.
You might be rolling the diceon what God intends, right?
And conversely, if you're like, Icould only be broke for Jesus, 'cause
that's what righteousness looks like,I would say, oh no, you're starting

(27:17):
to touch on self-righteousness.
Be careful, right?
so fast forward, you know, in my ownjourney, when we launched a nonprofit as
my wife and I did, it made all the sensein the world for me to repeat the patterns
of being downwardly mobile for Jesus.
that felt like a reallysafe and comfortable place.

(27:38):
and I think it was shaped by thoseuninvestigated childhood things.
And it is no longer how I view it.
how'd you erase that?
'cause there, there are a lot of peopleoutside of church world or religion that
Yeah.
with money, it almost seems like it'sa double whammy or triple or whatever.
When, we bring scripture or we
Mm-hmm.
you know, when we bring religioninto it, give us, give us your

(28:02):
three steps to overcome that?
No.
Or what,
Yeah.
are the
And you can find this in my new book.
to overcome your
Yeah.
Yeah.
just whatever.
Whatever you can share that helped you.
You say you're overcome it.
I actually had a situationrecently where I thought I had.
Mm,
But it reared back up
mm-hmm.
and something
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ooh, maybe I don't have thatresolved at 60 something years old.

(28:24):
Yeah.
And let me be clear, what I wastrying to say was I no longer
affirm what I grew up with.
But unwinding it from my heartand my body is a different thing.
the only way I know how to dothis is to be honest, right?
Like, I would feel safer if I hadX amount of money in the bank.

(28:45):
Oh, really?
That's where you're gettingyour sense of safety.
Whew.
We're not in the God territory anymore.
we're in the mammon territory.
You can only serve one.
Or conversely somebody going,oh man, if I don't have that
car, then I don't feel importantenough to be in my social circle.

(29:06):
there's a million ways it shows up,but the only way I know how to really
get at it is one, be honest, behonest with what's coming up for you.
are there things that around money thatmake you feel like you are the man?
that's a great indicator.
Do some curiosity work there.
Are there things where youfeel terrified about money?
Great place to do somecuriosity work, right?

(29:28):
And then actually do thework to write it out.
Oh, I'm feeling this because of this.
Where did that story start for me?
Oh, it started because when I sawmy dad lose his job, or whatever
your story might be, right?
and you can't live in our western culture,which is so many ways, obsessed, right?

(29:49):
With what's going on with financialresources, and not have some
sort of thing you need to heal.
Right?
and personally, I think thatthe ultimate place to arrive
at is where you go, oh, huh.
Money is a tool for doing what Godhas called me to do in the world.
Amazing.
Right?
and if God owns the cattle on a thousandHills, I don't have to, like, I can own

(30:10):
what he gives me to do with, you know,
I know the thing that bothered meas I realized that my mood went
up and down based on balance.
My wife and I, you know, we'vebeen married almost 37 years,
been together for 40 plus.
man, congratulations.
It's like, yeah, thanks.
and we kinda realizedit's like, you know what?
Why is our mood this way now versus this?

(30:35):
And, you know, a lot of it's that,that I think that tension between,
you know, we really are citizensof the kingdom of God, but yet we
somehow seem to be living in Babylon
Yeah.
we start doing thisBabylonian stuff and mindset.
And anyway, that's, that's another topic.
Yeah.
I don't think we'll get to it, but I wouldreally love to know, I know we were kind

(30:56):
of going along the path of your journey.
Yeah,
want to allow some time, 'cause thiscorner to corner is fascinating to me.
yeah,
and I think with the people we haveleaders in business and ministry, I
Absolutely.
love to hear some things about that.
Then we're gonna, some things goingon in your family to kind of get
to where, what allowed you to writeor forced you to write this book?

(31:18):
No Elevator to Everest, buttell us about Corner to Corner.
Yeah, so, let me pick back up thestory here so you get context,
coming back from that trip, right.
I would argue that God often givesus the gentle whisper, Hey, this
is where I want you in your life.
And that trip to Nairobi wasthat gentle whisper, right?
but I tuned it out, right?
Like a teenager, here's aloud thumping in their car.

(31:39):
They turn down the volume insteadof getting it fixed, right?
and often I think the lovingsledgehammer comes next, right?
for me, my wife and I, whenwe got married, 2004, we had a
health crisis on our honeymoon.
And I'll just say this, it's nevera good sign when your honeymoon
ends in the emergency room, right?

(32:00):
and it led to like theband thing was gone.
The life we thought we weregonna build is gone, right?
And there were two years ofreally intense suffering.
You know, some medical sufferingas well as some just, who are
we without these things, right?
Or the path that we thought we were on.
And coming out of that, my wife and I,we had this deep sense of, okay, we are

(32:23):
more sure than ever that God is, is real.
We're a little more likeiffy on like religion.
and we're sure that if we aregonna say we follow this Jesus, we
better get a theology of neighbor.
How do you love neighbor as self, right?
not as like a one-off thing, butas a lived reality every day.
And we didn't know how to do it.

(32:45):
And so we moved into a historicallylow income neighborhood in
Nashville, 18 years ago, right?
And this is a neighborhood that has allthe stats and all the stories, And we
moved in and my wife got a job workingbehind bars at the men's prison, as a
former offender job training specialist.
A fancy way of saying she helpedpeople come home to jobs in

(33:06):
that tornado of a moment, right?
Of coming out of prison andback into the community.
and so we started doinglife in that neighborhood.
oftentimes, with guys coming inand outta prison, all that stuff.
what we saw over time was there arethese incredible people with all
these god-given passions, skills,and drive, but don't have a bridge

(33:29):
to express that in the marketplace.
and so we got really curious about like,what would it look like to create a
nonprofit that was kingdom-minded, right?
Like we're, we're not shy about our faith,but we're focused on economic development.
Like we should be the most creativeand, you know, to, excuse the
language, but we should be bad assesat economic development, right?

(33:51):
and I would argue Christians shouldbe the most highly risk taking
creative beings in the world, right?
'cause if the story is that we're good,then let's go build some stuff, right?
and so we launched corner tocorner with this vision, okay?
Economic development relationship kingdom.
and what we learned over a fewyears was that entrepreneurship was

(34:13):
the right way to do that for us.
And so we started this program thatgave underestimated entrepreneurs the
tools they needed to plan, start andgrow their own small business, right?
Using like the Lean Canvasmodel, very popular and kind of
business startup communities.
Who's your target customer?
What problem are you solving for them?
What's your financial modelthat will actually make sense?

(34:35):
You know, all the things.
And we started holding thatat like a local rec center.
and we were very iterative.
You know, I come from softwaredevelopment as well, like the Kanban
two do, doing done kind of world.
And so we built our nonprofit that way.
and I'll never forget, like we are testingout this entrepreneurial program and
I was like, do we have something here?
You know, you're never sure.
until our first graduation righthere, we've got 13 of these new

(35:00):
entrepreneurs and one of them issharing about her business to a
crowd of about 40 business leaders.
And she was a 13-year-old Who cameevery week with her mom and she
had set the pace for the class.
You know that student who's like,oh man, they're killing it, right?
This was her.
And she gets up and she shares thisvision about how, she's creating a line

(35:21):
of custom business cards, and buttons sothat she can, get her fellow teenage girls
to speak to each other off the internet.
Right.
Every parent in the audience was like,oh my gosh, I want that for my teenager.
Right?
and then she goes, and by the endof Q2, I'm gonna sell a hundred
units, And this business leader herein town, in Nashville, she stood

(35:44):
up and she goes, I'm buying yourfirst 100 units tonight, darling.
And then another business leader stoodup and I'm buying your second 100 units.
And you visibly saw this girl who was alittle nervous talking in front of people.
Her shoulders were kind of down.
You saw her shoulders go back, herchin come up, and you witnessed the
moment that her horizon got larger.

(36:05):
Right.
And I was like, Ooh, this, this is it.
And so we went from onesite, you know, 13 people.
now as of this last week, we've nowgraduated over 1600 entrepreneurs.
Last year we put 37 million backinto the neighborhood economy, and
this year we're on track to clear 40.

(36:25):
it has been the joy of my life tosee neighbors who are often told,
Hey, low income neighbor, the bestyou get to hope for is stability.
to hear instead, no, no, no.
I believe that you have given to you byGod what you need to build something that
can turn you into the economic engineof your family and your neighborhood.

(36:49):
And you don't have to do it alone.
We're gonna do it with you.
Will, I've got a few questionsI wanna follow up, but I,
there's one I wanna back up.
Tiffany fall in love with rockstarWill or with African missionary Will?
Because I, I missed that along the story.
We don't have to go into detail there, but
Oh man, that is such a good question.
And what's really funny about thatquestion, Tim, is the answer is both.

(37:13):
I have a theory, Tim, that all of ushave a moment where we peak, right?
I have the benefit of knowing theexact moment I peaked, and I played
a show at a party, on a Saturdaynight, playing rock and roll guitar,
crazy house party kind of vibes.
And this line of young ladies walks by andmost of 'em are dressed up super fancy,

(37:36):
you know, like really dressed to impress.
And that was not my style.
And then there's this one beautifulyoung woman wearing a t-shirt that said
Windy Gap, which was a Christian, summercamp that my dad used to preach at.
And I leaned away from the microphoneand I just said, nice shirt.
That's all I said, little didI know that was Tiffany who

(37:56):
would go on to become my wife.
Um, but that, that she walked out thatnight going, oh my gosh, that felt nice.
Who was that guy And shecouldn't stop thinking about it.
Right.
Well, the next morning I didn't knowmy, at that point my parents had moved
back to North Carolina and my dad wasa pastor at like a big church there
in town and Tiffany and all of hercollege roommates went to that church.

(38:18):
So the very next Sunday morning,they're doing a slideshow about my
trip to Nairobi with a epidemiologist.
And I'm on stage playing the grand pianowith a song I wrote while a slideshow of
my mission trip is up on stage, right?
Like, I could not have planned a better, agame like slightly dangerous rock and roll

(38:40):
guy Saturday night, like songwriter wholoves kids, you know, like Sunday morning.
and Tiffany would tell you,after that she, she pursued
me until I got the signal.
And we've been married over 20 years.
smitten, truthfully.
I mean, that is, you're,that's impressive.
the unfortunate thing though, isthat you really, I hate to say

(39:02):
this, you can't go higher after
No, no, no.
That was it.
Totally it.
Like she caught me in my best 12 hours.
Like that was it.
That's also how many of us menmarry way up the food chain
when things like that happen.
Absolutely.
Which is awesome.
So, one thing that I loved hearing, and Iactually saw this is I think you mentioned

(39:22):
you were in software development.
You, I think are scrum master.
My wife's a scrum master's, done
Yep.
I'm an industrial and systemsengineer from Georgia Tech, so kinda
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
leadership teams with strategyand all this kinda stuff.
one of the things that I have found Will,and I'll say it and let you comment, is
that often nonprofit and church world.

(39:47):
doesn't accept some of the systems,process and structures that
do work well in, we'll call itBabylon or whatever business world.
Yeah.
so give me some pros and cons.
Some good, the bad, maybethe ugly of that background.
You have, fortunately you wererunning this ministry, I believe.
It wasn't like you were trying
Yeah,
into something

(40:07):
no.
if you plug into somethingelse, buddy, you're the devil.
I'm telling you.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
So talk a little bit about that 'causewe've got people listening in that they
want to take their business skills and
Totally.
ministry
Yep.
think some ministry people want it.
Yeah, I mean, my sense is that there's adynamic tension, in any org, but it really

(40:27):
comes out in this kind of way, right?
Where imagine two banks of a river, okay?
On one side you have all heart, right?
I'm just here to loveon the people, right?
That is an important, it's awhole side of the river, right?
We need that bank.
And on the other side is the systemsand the vision of what this thing
could be if it were performingat an efficient level, right?

(40:51):
And I think if you walk too farin one direction or the other.
You're no longer in the river.
The river is the org.
You know, and it needsthat dynamic tension.
And I think sometimes people who getinto ministry, they, they apply a
pastoral lens to everything such thathard conversations get harder, you know?

(41:14):
and actually having key performanceindicators feels like a weapon
rather than an invitation forgrowth, you know what I mean?
Whereas in, in the, you know, inthe business world, you're like,
okay, well how did you, do youknow, like, you had an event.
How many people attended?
Oh man, we only got 30.

(41:34):
Oh really?
You only got 30?
I thought the goal was 75.
Yeah, it was, but I guesswe just didn't hit it.
Like that would in the church,we would go all day going,
okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.
You know, in the business world, wego, okay, so where did it break down?
How many invitations?
Was it the messaging?
Was it the platform you were on?
What, what was the conversionrate per click through?

(41:57):
Like we would know all that stuff.
and so for like corner to corner,we have a wait list right now of
3,462 people for this program.
we're, our goal is to launch 10,000of these entrepreneurs in 10 years.
You know, like, and we, we have heartcentered, like we wanna move with neighbor

(42:17):
at the speed of relationship, and we wantto do it with this view of excellence and
excellence that doesn't crush neighbor.
Right?
There's the dynamic, that we, Imean, we talk about this nonstop.
What's interesting is I to bible schoolin my early to mid fifties, hung out

(42:37):
with a lot of Christians, and I dowanna say this, I am a Christian, I
love Christians, even though some of thethings I say may be harsh against them.
So I wanna, I wanna give that
No, no, no.
but I'll
Yeah.
I have found it is easier to bringheart into those highly efficient
and effective business systemsthan it is to bring those business

(42:57):
systems into that heart structure.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, as a pastor's kid, assomeone who went to seminary,
I've been an intern at a church.
I've worked with a lot of churches.
I mean, I have moments, withoutnaming names, you know, where I'll
have, people are like, man, we sowanna partner with corner to quarter.
We're so excited.
And I'll say, awesome.

(43:18):
Here's an outline of thefirst two events we can do.
How many, you know, what'sthe recruitment plan?
How do we execute this?
And three weeks later, somebody'slike, Hey man, I just don't think
we can pull it off right now.
Or whatever.
You know?
And you're like.
Okay.
that's sad, you know?
and we're still gonna goand figure it out, you know?

(43:38):
So the cool thing Will is I'm prettyconfident that that first podcast
that I listened to was shortlyaround when Corner to Corner was.
I mean, some of these numbers you gaveare in that tone of man, we're rocking.
Things are awesome.
yeah.
Somewhere along the way, somethings have kind of, come at you.

(43:59):
you mentioned the sledgehammer oflove or something like that, that the
Mm-hmm.
what I've seen in my life.
Mm-hmm.
we all know we could do itincrementally and over time and
things like that, but usually
Mm-hmm.
it comes with a catalyticevent or a series of events.
Yeah.
Give us a little background on the familyand some of the other things that happened
Yeah.

(44:19):
first podcast episode that I listened to
Yeah.
in the book, and this will kindalead us into the last few minutes.
We've got to talk about the book.
Yeah.
So what happened essentially was onthe outside, like in my work life,
things were like, you know, roughlyup into the right, not, you know, in a
perfect line, but directionally correct.

(44:41):
but internally at home, you know, bothour kids are through domestic adoption.
My wife and I were so blessedto grow our family that way.
but when my, my son started on the pathof diagnoses and, and disability and all
that, I applied everything I knew how todo, which was do more work and solve this.
And there was no, thisdoesn't work that way.

(45:04):
You know, there's no way for aKPI on this, you know what I mean?
I, it was like an internal emotionalsuffering that's hard to quite name.
Right.
And in the face of that,my wife, experienced acute
clinical depression, right?
She was diagnosed with, somethingcalled complex PTSD, both from
kind of some childhood trauma stuffas well as, our daily experience.

(45:27):
and that meant that there weredays where it was hard for her
to get outta bed, you know?
I should say I've got fullpermission from her to share here.
and so I was trying to solve for myson and solve for my wife, right?
And it was not working.
my wife was like, Hey, she found thisamazing trauma, therapy place that really
helped her, like a retreat center, right?

(45:48):
Like an intensive retreat where theytake away your phone and no one can use
their last names, kind of stuff, right?
And she was like, you need to go.
And I was like, but aren't wetheorized enough as a family?
Right?
Like, never a good sign, by theway, if you're inventing words
to debate your spouse, right?
and my wife's an Enneagram eight, if youknow that world to challenge your role.
and she, she's like, no,no, no, you need to go.

(46:11):
And so I went, and day one I was there.
Very much so with a chipon my shoulder, right?
Like, I'm here to gettools to help fix my wife.
Just so arrogant, right?
By the end of day two, I wascracked, open, weeping, and knew
that I was there for me, right?
And what that place started to do for mewas give me the tools to compassionately

(46:34):
connect with myself, right?
And kind of get under the hood ofmy own heart, but I was coming home.
my context was about to get hard again.
And so I asked the question, canI turn my own life into a joy lab?
I got a notebook and I would writeout, here's the experiment for today.

(46:57):
This is what joy would feel like.
And it led to really practicalthings like, my son with his sleeping
challenges, he was sleeping better bythis point, but most of his days he
would wake up about five or five 30,
And I was like, okay, if I don't wantto wake up to like, you know, he would
always wake up yelling Daddy, right?

(47:19):
And like, you, you want to wake up witha cortisol level, you know what I mean?
Like a high cortisol stress hormone.
That's the way to do it, right?
And so I was like, no, no.
If I'm gonna enter the day differentlyand have agency in this, I'm gonna
set my alarm clock for an hour beforethat, which means I need to go to bed.
Really early and Oh yeah, I need tomove a coffee maker into the bedroom so

(47:41):
that I don't wake him up in the kitchen.
Right?
And I built out the place and thespace to then get still right?
And then I started experimenting.
What would this daily joy look like?
And from that, experience, I wrotethe book No Elevator to Everest, which
the whole idea is, I think so manyof us are waiting for our context

(48:04):
to change, to get better, right?
Like, I'll be better when X happensin my life, when I get the job I
really want, or when my spouse lovesme the way I hope they do, right?
Or I get the money right,like whatever it is.
and it is a, a way to set yourentire life up for failure, right?

(48:25):
And so, like, then the challengebecomes, is there a way for me.
To not live perfectly, but more andmore every day to live in this sense of
abiding joy no matter what my context is.
And so the book is like the stories andsome of the concepts and then practical
practices rather for so that you can trythese things on and then kind of invent

(48:49):
your own, to say, oh wait, actuallyI'm gonna actually step into Joy now.
Not, not that fantastical someday.
'cause someday is no day, y'all.
I love that word, joy.
My, we're, we're here in Colorado Springs.
I'm kind of, for those on thevideo, I'm looking up the hill.
'cause our RV's parkedin the alley behind 'em.
So we've got our five-year-oldand 3-year-old granddaughters

(49:11):
just almost within reach.
And they
Hmm.
here with us last night.
And five-year-old thismorning was talking about joy.
Hmm.
she crawled in bed with us andshe goes, yeah, we're supposed
to bring joy, aren't we?
I said, yeah, we're supposed to bring joy
Hmm.
and stuff like that.
But, but there's, I, I wanna,I wanna emphasize in reading

(49:32):
through the book or I scanned it.
didn't read it in depth, butI scanned the whole thing.
I lost count of how manytelevisions and windshields broken.
Yeah.
And let me follow up with one thing.
'cause I wanna, I want to emphasize, youknow, a lot of people say, oh yeah, we've
kind of got it rough too and all that.

(49:53):
and you know what, we're not,we're not here to compare.
That's not like
Mm-hmm.
a game we're playing.
But beginning of chapter six itsays, you know, maybe I should
just wrap my car around a tree.
You and the kids would be better off.
Oddly enough, I had brief leadingthoughts and that is not the way
I'm wired to think about my life
Mm-hmm.
when we were goingthrough bankruptcy and all

(50:15):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
was thinking if I just swerveto the right and hit that
Yep.
Mm.
And
Mm-hmm.
talk a
Talk a little bit.
how low it was and then I want us toget into a few of the techniques and
the practices that you came up becauseI mean, this, this, we're talking
about a rough situation here, right?
Yeah.
I mean, so to paint the picture from thebook, you just read that line, that was a

(50:38):
text message that I received from my wife.
Right.
and so there were days where I wouldcome home, I'd go home at lunch
from work or whatever to check onher and not know, like, would she
be okay, that kind of intensity.
and then with my son, hehas multiple diagnoses.
you know, autism, a global cognitivedisability over the last two years.

(50:59):
he was diagnosed with a raregenetic muscular disease.
so like, just thejourney continues, right?
And there would be times where he wouldbe so dysregulated as you mentioned,
Tim, that he kicked my windshieldso hard while we're driving down the
highway that, spider cracks across it,and we, I mean, I can't tell you how
many holes we have in the walls, right?

(51:21):
so to say that my daily life is reallyintense is to be pretty mild, you know?
and for the longest timeit was just dominating me.
It like controlled all of my experience.
You know, and I mean the context,I don't mean my son, right?
Like my son is amazing and Ilove him, and he's a kid who

(51:43):
feels joy, huge and sadness huge.
And you know, everything'svery big for him.
and it's not his fault, right?
Like there's not a blame situation here.
And so what I realized is, for me,and I think it's a challenge to
all of us, is the people in ourlife are not problems to solve, but

(52:05):
they're people to know and enjoy.
So what would it look like to step in to,to full presence in the midst of that?
You know, to ride out the, the intensemoments and then be there to hold
them after, you know, and, and withmy wife specifically, like for the
longest time I was trying to fix herdepression, which by the way, that's

(52:25):
not how depression works, right?
You want a recipe for failure, um,every husband in America, like, go
up to your wife and be like, I'mgonna fix your depression, right?
instead what we got to was a placeof, of me saying, Hey, I can't
climb in there with you, it's yours.
but I can be here right on the edge of it.
I'm not going anywhere.

(52:46):
I can hold this space with you andyou tell me what would be supportive.
I'm not running away, butit's not mine to solve.
Right.
and holding that dynamictension in our relationship.
Yeah.
So one, one thing that I, this goesback to an earlier conversation,
will, and this will help us land this
Mm-hmm.

(53:34):
me.
Yeah,
give us a few of those basics.
We started with one of them that I
yeah,
Give us a few of the
yeah.
then we'll talk about wherepeople can find the book.
Yeah.
So I would say first, like my view iswe have everything we need right now.
Right.
like from a biblical standpoint, wewould say we're image bearers, right?
Like the creator of theuniverse created us.

(53:55):
That's a pretty goodthing we got going for us.
right.
and we have the abiding Holy Spirit.
Like in the John Chapter 14.
Jesus says, I'm sending you the spirit tobe with you forever, who will be in you?
Right?
But the reality is, if most of usonly learn how to do work out here, we
are missing what's happening in here.
We're missing that connectionwith the abiding spirit.

(54:16):
Right?
so the practical techniques,right, was I needed to carve
out enough space like stillness.
Where I'm not doing, but rather I'mbeing, and I'm not being with the
lens of self condemnation, but onewith compassion and curiosity, right?
I think most of us avoid going inwardbecause we hate going inward because we,

(54:39):
all we do is punish ourselves, right?
Like you pizza, look whatyou did again, right?
Like all of us have that voice.
And so practical step was for me,I needed time in the morning before
I engaged with my son, my wife, mywork where I got curious and still.
And so this is a practice in the bookthat we call the emotional trailhead.

(55:02):
and just like a trailinto a forest, right?
It starts with a trail head says,Hey, here's the name of this trail.
This is where it's going.
you know, and, and often it's like threemiles in, there's a waterfall, right?
But you actually have to walkthat out to get to that revelation
of seeing that waterfall, right?
And most of us wake up in the morning,and none of us are neutral, right?

(55:23):
We don't wake up neutral.
We wake up totally flooded by allsorts of hopes, fears, anxieties.
I can't believe she saidthat to me before bed, right?
Like, whatever it is, we wake up that wayand then we just try to go about life.
And so the practice is to getstill for about 10 minutes.
Grab your favorite drinkwith caffeine Mine.
It's a cup of coffee right by the bed.

(55:44):
I get still, and I think of myemotions as the, the landscape, right?
And I go, what am I feelingthe biggest right now?
Oh, and it might be, oh, youknow what I'm feeling fear, huh?
Curious.
I wonder what's causing me to feelfear, and let's take it to money.
You go, oh man, I actually thoughtmy tax position at the end of this

(56:06):
year would be different than it was.
Right?
It's probably some listeners who can,relate to that particular fear, right?
I go, oh, huh, yeah, thatfeels really uncomfortable.
What story am I telling myself,oh, I am telling myself that I'm
an idiot for making that mistake.
Hmm, man, why am I telling myself that?

(56:31):
Oh, you know what?
Well, I grew up in a family that said Ibetter perform and in order to be okay or
in order to get love, is that what the godof the universe is saying to me right now?
No.
No.
The God of the universe is saying,Hey, do you hear the party?
The band is warming up just likethe invitation to the prodigal son.

(56:54):
Right?
The party is startedin the party's for you.
I love you.
Right?
That's what the spirit is sayingto us all the time, right?
But as we stay with thattrailhead of curiosity, we end
up going, I mean, 10 minutes.
And you go, oh man, I am believingthe lie that this tax thing is the

(57:15):
biggest thing going in my life.
Whew, Lord, would you helpme to release this fear and
step into the day differently?
And man, it's 10 minutes.
And you know, at first it mightfeel hard or awkward, or you might
even have a hard time naming youremotions, but you work that out
for a couple weeks in a row, right?
And I promise you, youwill be a different human.

(57:40):
You know, the cool thing is,we're sitting here telling
people to be still and breathe.
Yeah,
this is advanced stuff, right?
I mean, come on.
Just be still and breathe.
Come on.
Will.
Where can people find you?
And the book, I'm sureAmazon and stuff like that.
I've got a copy of it here.
Do that.
And I'm,
yeah,
you say one more thingbefore we wrap up here, but

(58:00):
yeah,
they connect with you?
yeah.
So, on Instagram it's Will Joyacuff, all one word, no underscores.
and then you can go to noelevator to everest.com.
you can sign up there for mysubstack and get like a free kind
of guide on some of the practices.
And of course, Amazon's huge guys, I'mall for supporting local bookstores, but

(58:22):
also buy it on Amazon and leave a review.
that's how people arefinding out about the book.
Excellent.
Any other quick just Holy Spiritled encouragement for someone who
might going through struggles?
anything else Will, beforewe wrap up and finish?
Yeah, I would just, anybody who feelsutterly stuck right, right now, I would

(58:43):
just encourage them to tell somebodythat they love, that they feel that way,
and ask that person to pray with them.
Start there sometimeswhen we are totally stuck.
That's the best thing we can do, isbe honest with someone who loves us.
Hmm.
That's good.
will Acuff, thank you so much.
The book is No Elevator to EverestShift from Survive to Thrive

(59:07):
through Spirit-led Self-Awareness.
I'll put a copy up here forthose watching on YouTube.
Yeah.
I enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Tim.
This is, man, it's tapped into a lot ofthe themes that we have been looking at
here at Seek Go Create for some time andWill's story and all that he's doing.
Just really emphasize the businessand ministry merging together

(59:28):
and then just still and quiet.
It's been beautiful.
We are here at Seek Go Create.
We've got new episodes every Monday.
I appreciate you joining us hereand we will see everyone next week.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Problem-Solving to Abiding Joy: Will Acuff’s Daily Joy Practices