Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: We’re back at the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Will Acuff is with us online. Will, thank you for joining us.
Will Acuff: Thank you guys so much for having me.
Henry Kaestner: So eager to hear about your work that you’re doing a corner to corner. As I told you before we get started. I’ve got a great friend of mine who is really one of my, heroes might be too strong a word, but maybe we’re gonna go with it. He’s just a great friend and just a faithful servant and getting out there and doing some incredible things for God’s Kingdom and India and doing it at scale. And he was telling me about this story, about this really incredible entrepreneur and great story of somebody who really impressed him named Will Acuff. And he was so passionate about the work that you’re doing. It is you’re loving on people and like, we’re gonna get this guy on. So here you are, grateful that you’ve spent time with us. Before we get started, much more about corner to corner. Tell us a bit about your own personal story, some background. Give us some framework and give us some context, please.
Will Acuff: Yeah. So born in Durham, North Carolina, but raised outside of Boston. Ended up in the New England area when my dad went to seminary. Gordon Cornwell. And the plan was like Southerners go north for school and then head right back to the south. But my dad got caught up in the early days of the church planting movement and started a church in 1980, 30 days.
Henry Kaestner: Isn’t that early days of the church plane move it like 2000 years ago?
Will Acuff: I mean, technically, yes. But Paul didn’t call it that. He didn’t have a conference.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Get together. Yeah.
Will Acuff: Yes. So that church started in the office of a gas station in 1985. And I saw it just explode with growth. And what I would describe is conversion growth. Just people getting engaged with the gospel of grace for maybe the first time. So I was raised with the sense that the gospel is lived out adventure. And around my senior year of college, I felt a call to go into ministry. But with no details, like there wasn’t like a manual that also, you know, dropped down from the sky. But I just knew I was supposed to be in some form of full time ministry. So I went to college with that kind of idea in mind. Went to NC State down in Raleigh, North Carolina, decided I was done with New England. I’ve been there since. It’s fine to visit. I’d love to catch a Red Sox game sometime in the future when we can do best gathering’s again, but ended up back in the south and at NC State. I fell in love with music and being in a band and started doing that, you know, touring around and all that kind of stuff and was kind of on the path of doing my own thing. I had started a band saying we were, you know, a band of Christians who were encouraging people and all that kind of stuff. What was really on a path towards building my own kingdom. And it was about my own ego and my own glory and probably would have been on that path for a much longer time if God in his mercy hadn’t broken me of that. And one of the ways that he did that was I got accepted to go on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, led by an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina. And his wife was a general practitioner. And for six months before this trip, we read things about economic disparity, global trade, how other countries policies influence, you know, what’s going on in sub-Saharan Africa, all these kind of really robust and complicated things. And then the trip itself was meant to be us coming as Christians to learn from our Christian brothers and sisters in what they were doing in response to the AIDS pandemic. So we weren’t coming to build something we didn’t do, you know, quote unquote anything while we were there other than sit at the feet of our brothers and sisters and learn what they were doing. And it was the first time I’d been exposed to that level of poverty. And I would say it was the start of a journey of really getting a theology of suffering and a theology of loving your neighbor that was more robust than maybe I’d grown up with. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: So every entrepreneur is involved in solving a problem or really leaning into an opportunity. So this is a beginning part of beginning to understand the context and the problem that you’re called to solve. But you just didn’t do it by yourself. This is one where and it’s one of the rare stories that we have on the program where you were called together with your wife. Right. And this is something you both got involved in together. Tell us about the adventure of starting that together.
Will Acuff: Yeah. So we got married in 2004 and ended up in Nashville a little over 13 years ago. And when we landed here, we had. Tons of questions about what does it look like to love your neighbor as yourself, but didn’t feel like we had a lot of really clear answers or guidelines, and so we moved into a low income neighborhood on purpose. And my wife is she is passionate, she is driven, and she is full of adventure. And so she was not intimidated by that at all. In fact, when we landed in that neighborhood, she wanted to go full time into nonprofit work. So she got a job working behind bars at the men’s prison as a former offender job training specialist with the Department of Corrections. And she started working with former offenders. Right. You know, soon after we got here and it was actually that experience that helped shaped the early days of corner to corner. What we do now, because she was learning and being exposed to all the many different, multilayered ways that, you know, the justice system works or doesn’t work. Right. The economic disparities involved what people do when they transition, how vulnerable they are. And we saw people coming out of prison that ended up being our neighbors because we lived in this historically low income neighborhood. And so our house became a place of sanctuary. And again, because my wife was leading the charge behind bars, you know, having former gang members or whatever over to the house for dinner was no big deal. There was not a moment of like, should we or shouldn’t we? She was already, like, off to the races. So, yeah, definitely could not have done this if I was trying to persuade her to join me. But she was right there.
William Norvell: Wow. Well, William here. And another time we’ll have to figure out how you live with someone shortening your name. It’s always been something that’s really bothered me. If you’re a real William.
Will Acuff: But I am I am a real William. But I prefer the short. I’m like, let’s get this done. Let’s keep moving.
William Norvell: Man, it’s just like Bill Billy. Call me anything but will is just like slick people aren’t even trying. It’s just it’s just half the name.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah but, what’s the name of your son, Liam?
William Norvell: But that’s the cool part of the name.
Henry Kaestner: I think Will Acuff has got it right. I think the beginning part is a cool part of the name.
William Norvell: Oh, ok Lord Jesus. Don’t let Liam listen to this one. He’s only two. He’s only two. Will, tell us more. Dive deeper at a corne to corner. Tell us exactly what you guys do and especially what you do with your role there.
Will Acuff: Yeah. So we got started in 2011, really with the idea of how could we create a gospel centered and relationship driven nonprofit where the programing was excellent, but it was an opportunity for relationship thinking that life transformation happens then is sustained in relationship and life on life opportunity. What we’d seen often in the nonprofit world was there was so much emphasis on the program that the relationship never continued after the programmatic piece was over. And so we kind of want to flip that on its head. And so we started in 2011 going alongside of a local rec center and just saying, hey, what could we do together right here in our neighborhood? And so our first program was teaching of redemptive storytelling class to former offenders so that they could get stable employment. And again, that was led by my wife. And we saw that first night go from five to 10 to 15 to 20 people in that first cohort. And many of those people are still in our lives today with deep, meaningful relationships. And I’ll never forget the first time I walked into that rec center for a meeting. The assistant director was looking at her phone and I come in and said, hey, I’m here to meet with Mario. And she wouldn’t look up from her phone. And she just pointed out she would later tell me, yeah, like, here’s another do gooding white boy. He’ll be gone in a week, you know, like, I don’t need this. But three months later, after the Ministry of Consistency had, you know, just showing up over and over again her grandson’s hammy downs, where our son’s first close, you know, we adopted for the first time and she was asking my wife out to go with her and her girlfriends for drinks and like relationships were starting to form. And so really organically with what I would call an empathy driven approach rather than a pity driven approach. We just started slowly but surely growing. This thing is our own kind of, you know, entrepreneurial side hustle and venture as a family funding it ourselves. And then it really took off when we saw that there was a gap for low income entrepreneurs or what we might call underestimated starters, where there weren’t programs for people to plan starting and grow their own small business. And a lot of our former offender neighbors were able to get nine dollar an hour jobs in the Nashville economy, but they weren’t able to get that living wage, which M.I.T. had at twenty to sixty five an hour at the time. And so we are trying to figure out what are different ways we can help these folks throw their own financial stability and then bring some of that wealth back to the neighborhood. And so we launched our own entrepreneurship program called the Academy in 2016. And that has scale to seven locations around Nashville now. And it’s become the largest producer of entrepreneurs in middle Tennessee. And we’re on our way by the end of this year to be the biggest in the state. And it has been a crazy fun and exciting. Adventure.
William Norvell: Wow, that’s amazing, two things I want to pull out there that just jump out to me as what we hear in a lot of entrepreneurs stories, but I’d say less and less in my own personal experience. There’s more of this. I need this giant big vision before I get started. And what I heard from you. Oh, I just want to highlight just you just started next door. You said, you know, what am I going to do right in front of me? You know, God’s put a few things in front of me. I’ll take the next step and take the next step and then take the next step. I think that’s so important for entrepreneurs to hear as they’re starting something just to do what’s next. And to see where God can take it. And then secondly, I love that phrase Ministry of Consistency. And that’s just so huge and I say I’ve been one of those white do gooders that had an idea and came in what’s you know, just to be honest, right. I’ve been that person that showed up and and was inconsistent. And I know what that feels like. And so I thank you for showing up and continuing to pour in. And then as you go deeper into corner corner. I’d love to hear, you know. Let our audience into the unique challenges that some of these entrepreneurs face, that maybe others don’t. But I always love how I still get their learnings in there for other entrepreneurs listening as well and how they’re going to come alongside in these especially these crazy times that we’re in where you’re going to have to innovate in new ways. Yeah.
Will Acuff: I mean, a big thing is a lot of our entrepreneurs don’t have access to capital. And I don’t just mean like they’re going to do some crazy big a couple of million dollar round, but they don’t even have friends and family rounds. Right. Because historically, the income gap is so huge, you know, for minority communities. And so one of the big emphasis of the program that we started with literally week one was start small so you can start now. And so an example of this is, you know, say you want to run a restaurant, you know, you want to launch a breakfast place. We had an early starter who said that they didn’t have that three hundred thousand dollars worth of capital, you know, to get that off the ground on day one. But instead, we set out how do we break this down to the simplest piece? Is that catering? Is that a waffle stand? Like if the waffle is the centerpiece of your thing? Let’s literally go spend two hundred dollars worth of lumber at Home Depot and build you a stand that we just put up on this corner and see how clients respond to your food. Like let’s do hands on market research, you know? And so I think that’s a big thing, especially in this Cauvin 19 moment, is if you’re not going to start until you’ve got all the pieces right or you’re not going to start until it could be the big thing. It’s going to be harder and harder for you to get moving. And so that’s a big piece. And one way that we overcome the challenges and another thing is, you know, your network really obviously all of us know that that’s really important, vital. But we live in a time where income gaps or, you know, differences in socioeconomic background divides that divide us by neighborhood. They divide us by school. Right. And so many different ways. And so you might have an awesome idea, but you don’t know the people that could really help you to grow it. Right. Put you in the right rooms. And so the way our program works is we bring in guest speakers who can expand their network every single week over the 10 weeks of the course. And we found that seeds some beautiful relationships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And that’s really the we got the name corner to corner from the idea of we want to make sure everyone is seeing that they have something to give and receive no matter what corner they’re coming from, whether that’s the CEO’s corner office or the dealers corner, which is his office. Right. They both need to be a teacher and a learner. And we think that’s biblical as well. Right. Because we are broken in beautiful were made in the image of God. And we’re also rebels. Right. We’re also sinners who are the walking wounded, if you will. And so we don’t want to present one group as having their life together. One group is not, but rather, you know, create channels for empathy and growth together.
William Norvell: And take us one step further into that. How do you actually do that? I love that concept and I feel like I’ve seen that, too. It’s sort of this in are you engaging with or you empowering another group that trying to figure that out? How do you make everyone feel like they’re working together? They bear the same image of God, that they’re on the same team. Walk us through that a little bit.
Will Acuff: Yeah, I mean, we do that in tons of different ways. A practical way within the academy is right away. We started doing leadership training where we’re training some of our graduates and other early stage minority starters to lead the program itself. So we didn’t have, you know, oh, you saw the healthcare tech firm for 30 million. Now, come and teach these folks. You just need to learn where to get their business license. Right. We instead had people on step 10 instead of a step a thousand teaching the curriculum. And that one gave the right language in the most immediate because those people were still close enough to go. Here are the steps. Right. Follow this. And so that was one way we recreate an atmosphere of all of us in this together. And then the other thing is we started things like mentorship programs where we addressed ideas of mansplaining. Right. And what kind of baggage you might be bringing in with white privilege or not understanding the burdens that somebody else is carrying. Right. And so our mentorship program in and of itself was not set up. As I am high up, let me teach you. Right. So we do those kind of intentional cultural things were unpack some of that. And then on a practical fundraising level, we have, for example, never done a banquet fundraiser because that has become a genre in the Christian fundraising world. Right. And what I mean by that is like we invite the donor to come in and bear the image of God and look shiny and new and have the resource right. They bought ticket or they sponsor the table. And at some point in the night, the story of poverty or brokenness is going to come up. And so we’ve actually taken the image of mans, the Bible talks about we’ve broken it in half. One gets to bear the image of God, one gets to bear the image of brokenness. And so instead of doing that, we have free fundraising events where our whole community gets together. Right. And then we design the flow of the room and where the food is and everything to force people to engage with each other in ways that they might not otherwise have been. And then we never position anybody as the victim. Rather, we amplify the good. We have strong emphasis that if we are all image bearers of God, then we all already have passion, creativity and drive. So as a nonprofit, our job is to build bridges of opportunity for that to be expressed. We don’t have to give that to anybody.
William Norvell: Hmm. That’s good. That’s good. Go a little bit into the community approach. So obviously, what I haven’t heard you talk about yet is our ally and return on investment. And while I’m sure you’re focused on that, at some level, it seems like you’re a little bit more focused on the relationship in the community in which God has placed you. And could you walk through how the organization Corner to Corner thinks through those various variables in sort of creating a sustainable nonprofit?
Will Acuff: Now, that’s great. So we do have good data. Part of my own life. I’ve run a side hustle of agile consulting for doctors. You know how they can use agile methodologies and principles for their research. And because I have those relationships, early on, we brought some behavioral scientists from Vanderbilt University to the table, told them what we were doing. And they started designing custom pre and post class surveys for us so we can measure two key things. The first was, are people actually learning? Right. So prior to starting a class, could you tell us what legal entity type you should be and how to file for that? You know? And on the end of class, can you answer that now? And then the other piece of data we were trying to get at was social determinants of health. Right. If we are increasing confidence by your financial future and giving you a better understanding of how your skills can be used in the marketplace, we’re actually changing the overall global health picture of our community. And so we started doing data measurement on both of those in seven of our eight measurement points of shown statistically significant improvement. So that’s one big area. The other is we do a once a year annual survey getting at least 50 percent of our graduates to see where they are and the lifecycle of their business. And as of the last one, 72 percent of our graduates are actively making money on their business. Which, again, is in line with the SBA numbers. You know, the SBA says that roughly 73 percent of small businesses will still be in business in five years if they are part of a mentorship program. Right. If people walking alongside of them. So that’s another thing we measure. And then we pair our graduation numbers with the SBA data, the annual report card that comes out specifically, we pair it with their lowest possible number.
So what I mean by that is there’s two big data points there. What a side hustle or a solar producer will make in a given year. That number was 23000 last go round. And then what you’ll make if you become a registered LLC or a C Corp, and that number hits around fifty two thousand annual. And so we pair our graduates with that lowest possible number. So, you know, two hundred eleven graduates ends up roughly five billion dollars of money earned and coming back into the community. So that’s kind of the data we measure.
Rusty Rueff: That’s awesome. Can you take us through a couple of the stories, the success stories that you’ve had?
Will Acuff: Yeah. So one of my favorites when I really don’t know if you have something and every entrepreneur knows this, you don’t know if you have something until you do it, you know, until you see that moment where it sparks. And at our first graduation for the academy and our first one had 40 people, our last one, which unfortunately had to be virtual. But we had 6000 Facebook views on our last graduation. So really encouraging growth there. But in that first 40 person one, we had one of our graduates who’s a 13 year old girl who came with her mom every week and she just set the pace for the class. It was awesome. She crushed it. And so that night, she was a guest speaker and she said, you know, hey, my goal for the end of Q2 is to sell 100 units. So once they hear a 13 year old talk like that is awesome. And her product where these greeting cards and custom buttons that she made to connect her own generation, younger kids to each other and communication that wasn’t online. So really cool kind of idea. Well, hearing her story, this woman immediately stood up. This business leader in our community said, I want to buy your first 100 units tonight. And then another person stood up and said, I want to buy your second 100 units, you know? And now, like, rocket fuel. Right. That young girl. Another cool story again with to start small start now. We had one of our graduates for that first cohort. He wanted to launch his own restaurant and he wanted it to bridge kind of soul food and modern kind of hipster esthetics. Right. Imbibes. But he didn’t have the money to start right then. And so. He launched a catering business and he grew it month in, month out, learned about the numbers, learned how to keep his costs down. Right. Worked on the business and his brick and mortar launched last year here in Nashville. And I reached out to in the midst of Cauvin, 19. I said, man, do you need a bridge loan or do you need help right now? And he’s like, honestly, I’m good. So super encouraging to hear that kind of our philosophy of like a lean and low overhead and all that stuff has really helped people to navigate this moment. Yes. A couple of the stories.
Rusty Rueff: That’s very cool. I’m imagining those community buttons for that generation talking to each other. I’m trying to measure what’s on. It’s probably nothing that I would understand.
Will Acuff: Yeah, probably a bunch of, like, emojis. And it’s wordswithout vowels. Exactly. Exactly. One other story I’ll share. And you know, again, we don’t try to get into any kind of petty vibes, but this one graduate has asked me over and over and over again to make sure I share his stories like he’s gone above and beyond to make sure this gets out. But this was a guy who wanted to launch his own cleaning company, both residential and industrial, and at the time was living in his car. And within two years of graduation, he had five vans, had his own office space, and he was sharing it with other academy graduates. That’s actually our most popular thank you to video every day where I did a little tour of his office. So that’s one of them, where it’s just the difference between trying to say, like, hey, I want to do good to you. Right. Like in here the terms. This is what it means versus this, which is you have an idea you’re excited about. And all I’m going to do is put a little more wind in your sails. Right. And then get out of the way. That’s the difference here.
Rusty Rueff: Is there a common factor that you can identify for the graduates of the academy that go on to become successful?
Will Acuff: Yeah, it’s usually the ones that are really flexible and willing to be fluid, like the ones who say this is the thing and it has to look exactly like this and go like this. They usually don’t do well, but they usually honestly don’t even graduate because we have week after week we have a customer count contest. And so we actually keep track of that at class with like a Mojie stickers. And then the winner gets custom business cards and they have to go out and determine, like, do I have the right flavors? Is this the right pricing model? Do people even care about this product? And usually they wash out about week five or six. But yeah, I’d say the common characteristics for the ones who are successful are the ones who are willing to be flexible and the ones who realize that it takes 10 years for an overnight success. That tends to be they have the sustaining power.
Rusty Rueff: That’s been interesting. A lot of our guests, as we’ve been going through this, covid 19 time. That idea of flexibility, agility, being able to pivot quickly, you know, has been the difference between survival in some cases. Right. Not only its success, but also survival. You know, our audience are faith driven entrepreneurs. Not everybody’s gotten a chance to go through something like the academy or some incubator. What would you like to leave our audience with our listeners that they might learn something that you can carry over from the academy to them?
Will Acuff: Yeah. I mean, I’d first, just from a faith perspective, Echo, you know, what theologians have said for thousands of years, the journey of faith is knowing yourself and knowing God better. Right. And if you start a business, you’ve just decided to fast forward that process. Right. And that you should pay attention to how you’re feeling. What are your stressors? All those things go deep on that. Bring that to the Lord. So from a faith perspective, I’d encourage you on that. The other thing from, you know, an academy perspective, I’m a really big believer in like a simple what I might call an agile approach to your own business and using a tool like Trello. This is something we cover in the class, the setup A to doing done every single week and realizing how many hours you actually have to get, you know, functional work done. And you a review every single Friday. What did I get done? What didn’t I get done and why? And kind of cultivating that practice so you can understand your own velocity better and so you can show movement and encouragement to yourself every single week.
Rusty Rueff: That’s a great point. And I think we’re seeing that in the marketplace. Right. We’re seeing the growth of things like, you know, nethers clubhouse and there’s Monday dot com and there’s work board and all of these different productivity tools that are holding ourselves accountable at a time when we don’t have the coworker sitting next to us. That’s definitely a great lesson for all of us to take away.
Will Acuff: Yeah, we need the endorphin hit, you know, when they write it down and then mark it done.
Henry Kaestner: Well, I want to ask you one last question. I’m intrigued by this, this partnership that you have with your wife. And we mentioned a little bit at the beginning, but there’s something really special about being able to process all that’s around you with your best friend and your wife. And that must come with just a lot of joy and a lot of shared purpose and mission. But it’s frustrating being. Are there days that are just really difficult there, days, you know, like am I doing the right thing, like going about the right way? And there’s a lot of stress that an entrepreneur has compound that by having that stress and being unsure of your capability and then those that you work around and that person is the person you go to church with every Sunday that you’re raising kids with. How do you deal with that type of real stress in a relationship?
Will Acuff: Yeah, well, it’s funny. I would say for years we just basically let each other lead in our own lane, so to speak. Right. As we got it going, as our own kind of side hustle. It wasn’t until we said, all right, we’re going to quit all of our other jobs. Right. And this is gonna be our full time. And you know that the stress level of it and the decision making process had to get more intentional. And then when to turn those dialogs off got more intentional. And we were working on all of that when we have two kids and both through domestic adoption and our oldest son has severe autism, among other challenges. And when he was diagnosed, that completely revamped how we communicate and how we work with each other. And for the first time, I would describe us as having to embrace the gift of limitations. You know, Pete Gazzara, emotionally healthy spirituality language there and go, OK, if we wanted this thing to be 10x. Now we have to be trusting in the Lord that it’s gonna be two X, right, because of all that we have to give to our son. Yeah. And we’re gonna have to be really clear about the challenges of that and the Saros and the ups and downs and really practice not letting all of this bleed on top of each other. And then I would also say another big place, and this might be applicable to other entrepreneurs. If you’re doing something with a spouse or a family member, your passions will change. There will be a different part of the business that you want to lean into. Right. And letting someone explore their creativity and their passions within that and not kind of boxing them into the thing they maybe did on day one, I think is really important. And for us, what that’s looked like is my wife has really passion about racial justice and equity. And so she launched a part of quarter to quarter. That’s kind of our version of volunteer training called the Coalition, that she completely runs from top to bottom. I just, you know, give her high fives. That is all about what does it mean to be an ally and not to be kind of a white savior or to try to, you know. How do you reposition yourself and then ask Christians, how do we understand the racial history of the church and move differently in these modern times? But that wasn’t on the plate on day one that she’s grown into that. And so letting her have the space to do that and then fitting it into our volunteer training and still making sure it made sense for the long term growth of Corner Corner, that’s all been, you know, through lots and lots of really good dialog and prayer with each other.
Henry Kaestner: So far, summarize, I heard you say that you’ve got lanes and that, you know, she’s found something she’s really passionate about. You’ve been an encouragement. You’ve been high five and her, but you’ve not kind of drilling down on. Honey, what are your KPI? Right.
Will Acuff: Yeah. We’re both Enneagram eights. Right. And so if you know anything about the Enneagram. That means we’re both in the fighter role. Right. So we could easily get into a mode where we litigate everything. Right. Like you got that kind of coffee. Interesting. What were your top three reasons for that choice? Like we could fall into that. And so being able to go, you know what? I might have an opinion on this, but in the grand scheme of things, do I trust my wife? Do I trust the Lord? Is that work with my life, you know? Or as one of my friends put it, thank God the Holy Spirit still speaks. And 80 percent of the time it sounds like my wife.
Henry Kaestner: Oh, my goodness. I like that. That’s very good. And do you trust your wife with something as important as coffee? I don’t. I don’t know that I’m there, but I think that’s great that you are.
William Norvell: That’s great. Will, as we enforce move to close here, what I want to know the name of the restaurant, because many people have described me as soul food with a modern hipster vibe. I feel like I need to get to this restaurant.
Will Acuff: Yeah, come to Nashville. We’ve got some great stuff going on here.
William Norvell: That’s one that maybe a self-description.
Henry Kaestner: What do you mean by a lot of people?
William Norvell: Yeah. You know, we’re not going to get into data. You know, that’s not not what we do on the show.
Rusty Rueff: I didn’t think Liam could talk yet.
William Norvell: He’s got enough words to encourage his father. That’s all we need. That’s all we need. Second, I will highlight one of things. I love your story. I don’t even remember. I know a mentor told me this a long time ago when I was going through a potential job change. And I remember him telling me, you know, the most likely place God wants you is exactly where he has you.
And that’s, of course, not true for everyone. And a lot of our entrepeneur audience. I mean, that’s what they take a risk that jump out. But to really discern that and I just love what corner to corner does, which is that, you know, let’s just start where God has us. You know, we have an idea and let’s just move. And what you instill in your graduates, start small, start now. Just go right where you are. So I appreciate that. And as our listeners do when we do come to an end, you typically get a bad joke from me and then we move to seeing what God has been telling you through his word.
And we’d love to see how our listeners connect to our guests. It’s just amazing what God does through these moments. It’s amazing how many times we hear from guests. Oh, gosh, I really needed to hear that verse right now. So if you wouldn’t mind sharing a verse to God, maybe taking you through right now. Could be this morning, could be this week, could be a season that you’ve been in for a long time where you’ve really been meditating on a piece of scripture. Just walk us through that, if you would. Thank you.
Will Acuff: Yeah, that’s great. So I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Psalms of the century, like one 20 to 135, I think something like that. I didn’t go to seminary, so I should technically know the answer to that. But Psalm 124 starts with I will give thanks the Lord, my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. That for me, has been reminding me in this season of wait a minute, things aren’t like I thought they would be right getting hit from the left and to the right to remember to stop and recount the wonderful deeds of the Lord to remember. You know, again, we talked about that command is throughout the Bible. Remember, remember, remember. But sometimes I treat God like a salesman, right? I’m like, God, what are your numbers? What do you do last quarter? You know, what are you doing right this second for me? And so sitting in someone 24 and just meditating on what has the Lord recount is wonderful ways. So that’s been really encouraging to me.
William Norvell: Amen. Wow that’s great to think about just stopping to meditate on that. Will, thank you so much for what you do in Nashville. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day from serving entrepreneurs to come spend some time with us and our audience.
Will Acuff: Yeah. Thank you guys so much for having me. If anybody wants to follow along on the journey, check us out on Instagram corner to corner. We are very active on the socials.
Ministry in Deed
Ministry in Deed
As believers and business leaders, the curious question of artificial intelligence (AI) is one facing each of us. In what ways should we embrace this generational revolution? In what ways should we reject it?
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Ministry in Deed