the people in our life are not problems to solve, but 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 intense moments and then be there

to hold them after, 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.

I can hold this space with you and you tell me what would be supportive.

I'm not running away, but it's not mine to solve.

Right.

and holding that dynamic tension in our relationship.

What if the path to Joy isn't a mountaintop moment, but

a daily deliberate climb?

In this episode of Seek Go Create the leadership journey.

We sit down with Will Acuff, co-founder of the 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.

Amidst life's challenges from supporting underestimated entrepreneurs

to navigating personal trials, he offers insights into building a life

rooted in purpose and community.

us as we explore how intentional leadership and unwavering faith can

transform not only our own lives, but also the lives of those around us.

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 that we kind of got started with one of the

techniques in your book, which is we just kind of took a few really deep breaths

Mm-hmm.

man, it helped me.

Oh, absolutely, man.

it always tells my body that I am here right now and I'm present to this moment.

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 and I'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 to slow down and say, okay, it's

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, and that is, and we give you a choice.

start off with the what do you do, question, or are you Pick

it and just start answering.

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna answer the who I am in the world as

I, you know, think of myself.

I would say I am, an image bearer of the most high God of who is

abiding in the living spirit of God.

And out of that, I am aligned with my family, my wonderful

wife, Tiffany of 20 plus years.

My kids, 13-year-old son and 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 work I'm called to in the world, right?

Like in alignment, and all of that when taken together, right?

Alignment with God, alignment with 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 more and more live out of that place and

that peace every moment of every day.

That's good.

So how do you know if that's working well for you?

Oh, dude, you can tell in seconds.

Yeah, no joke.

can you tell if it's working or can you tell more if it's not working?

Which one do you do better at?

so I would say at this point in my life, I do both really well.

but that took a lot of work and a lot 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 something like, I believe all of us are uniquely

called to be where we are and do the thing that we were made to do.

And to the extent that we get out of alignment with that, right?

We feel it as like a drain and as stress and as pressure.

Right?

You almost feel like that clinched fist energy, you know what I'm talking about?

And we start saying things to ourselves like, I must, I have to, right?

That's kind of how life feels when we're out of that alignment.

and when we're in that place of abiding trust that I'm kind of pointing to what

it feels like is, ooh, I get to right.

and it feels like flow instead of grind.

and the only way I know to get better at being, intentional about

detecting that is through, walking out a daily practice of stillness.

and then doing check-ins throughout the day.

You know, back in the day if you had said, 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, I will feel it go, oh, huh.

That meeting went a little left when I thought it was gonna go a little right.

And now I'm feeling this way about it, and I'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 they might think that you have mastered

this and have it all figured out.

No, no.

That is not what I'm trying to say.

my wife sometimes said, your tone makes you seem as if you know it all.

I said, ah, I don't know what to do about my tone, man.

I'm just, don't know how to tone that down.

Uhhuh.

as that.

But how, how would you, if you go back maybe 10 years, you said you're

Mm-hmm.

mid forties,

Mm-hmm.

years and give yourself a grade on the description you just gave, and now

give yourself a grade now, either on a scale 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 around actually a little over 10 years ago.

That was when we realized that our life was taking a different turn, it started

with our son not sleeping through the night, not for a couple days, but

rather weeks than months, than years.

And that was our introduction to the fact that we were gonna be a family

that was touched by disability, right?

so if I go back in my head to that point, what I see is, a young man who

only had one way of doing life and that was find a problem and solve it.

That was my entire framework, right?

And so there were some really good things about that, maybe effective in

a lot of different areas, but when it comes to how you navigate life with

a child with disabilities, that is a losing recipe, And a recipe for burnout.

I did not know at all at that point in my life.

How to do what I would describe as more internal work, Like

self-awareness, like what am I feeling?

What am I believing as true?

And then how is that affecting my behaviors?

Right?

I had no framework for that.

My only answer was when in doubt do more.

In fact, at at that point in my life, that was my password

for my laptop do more, right?

2025 or 2015 or whatever year, right?

And I, and I updated that password every year with just a new year, right?

fast forward.

Now what's different is my context is the same.

Right.

I still have dynamically challenging situations, but every single day I

start the day by getting, still getting curious, and approaching my inner life

with a sense of compassion and curiosity.

and then I might still do all that activity that day.

You know, I might still problem solve, but I'm doing it from

a different place, right?

And I don't mean to say that I live perfectly in that space all day, I

mean, this weekend had a challenging, you know, situation at home.

And I allowed myself to go, oh yeah, I feel awful right now.

Oh, what am I feeling?

I'm feeling a lot of sorrow.

Hmm, yeah.

Do I want to repair what's bringing about that sorrow?

Or is there something I need to let go of and I need to mourn the loss of it, right?

And the difference now is I never even would've had that language.

Does that make sense?

You get to a certain place and you never feel sadness anymore, right?

that is nonsense.

you were made with a body that produces emotions, like, welcome to humanity.

Yeah.

I kept seeing the word joy pop up and I wanna talk about that in just a moment.

But, I wanna tell you the scripture that came to mind as

I was doing my research on you.

Yeah.

I told you this a little bit right before we hit record week.

I was traveling, we were moving RV from Arizona.

We're in Colorado now visiting grandparent grandkids, and then we're on our way

up to the Black Hills of South Dakota to spend a good bit of the summer.

Awesome.

to a few podcasts and I don't know how I did this, but I listened to

one PO podcast you were a guest on, and I think it was right around

when Covid started, like it was

Hmm.

ago,

Yeah.

your first book or something with corner to corner, which we're gonna talk about

Yeah.

I.

Yeah.

But then I listened to another one right 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 difference in just your tone to use

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 mind is the scripture that Jesus or the

teaching that Jesus has at the tail end 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.

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, the subtitle is Built on the Rock.

He says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings.

Of mine and does them.

I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock

Hmm.

and the rains descended.

The floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not

fall for, it was founded on the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings and does not do them will be like a

foolish man who built this house on the sand and the rains descended,

the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the house and it fell.

And great was its fall.

Hmm.

Here's what came to me after probably about a hundred times of

meditating on the sermon on the mount.

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 to me, will, that's what jumped

out at me about your story.

Would that

Thank you.

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 the context of my life hasn't changed, right?

In a lot of ways the rain and the winds, right?

Still happening, but with the foundation of rest, right?

And like, rest in the hands of my maker who is doing something beautiful, right?

Like there's a certain type of piece that comes with that.

Like when, you know, the foundation isn't going anywhere, right?

You can be in the middle of your living room on a big, rainy,

blustery day and make yourself a cup of tea, grab a good book.

You know what I mean?

but if your foundation is such that you always have to be shoring it up.

You know what I mean?

Like it is a invitation into a life of frantic activity, that is

designed, you know, I think all of 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?

And at some point in our development, 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 calling us into is to go, Hey, you are always

safe and you're safe right now.

And then meanwhile, our lizard brain might freak out and go, no, I'm not safe.

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 least twice in this 13 minutes that we've

been talking, and you just use the word rest you're a pastor's kid, grew up in

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 about that if we get to it,

Yeah.

some people are, might be listening in and go, you know, that word abide, I don't

Mm-hmm.

That sounds a bit churchy

Yeah.

rest sounds like just taking a lot of naps.

I don't know that I understand that.

a little bit more on how, maybe explain 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 clarification that, when I say the word abide, I

don't mean a ceasing of activity.

I think sometimes we have this false dichotomy that you're either abiding,

which looks like you doing nothing, we might even say like, you being lazy or

that old image, you know, that story of like the person in the flood and they're

standing on the roof waiting, praying, God send 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 not saying a ceasing of activity.

What I am saying is where your activity is coming from, right?

And to me the word abide is where is the ground of yourself resting in?

And to explain it to a second grader, I'd say, Hey, are you doing this homework?

Because in order to get a good grade, you've gotta do this.

And a good grade tells you 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 intense third 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 some of our third grade population.

and you can easily, you could ask 'em this question, they go, yeah, man,

if I don't do good on my third grade test, 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 just necessarily mean it as a churchy word.

I mean it as a who, who are you?

Where is your identity coming from?

What platform do you stand upon to do your work in the world?

You know?

And I even mean that with relationships, right?

Like if you're in a relationship and you're like, I need that person to

behave like this so I can be happy.

Oof recipe for disaster.

That is the opposite of abiding, right?

If instead, you're coming from a place of, oh, you know what?

I'm good.

I'm loved, I'm cared for, and out of that piece, I can meet this person.

Oh, man, something special is gonna happen there.

Yeah.

And Will, one of the things you brought up earlier is, a lot of

things I think began changing for you when you and Tiffany adopted,

Yeah.

I think a lot of parents, they go from, you know, you're, you know,

when you're single and then you get 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

Oh, yeah.

when a child arrives,

Mm-hmm.

we're gonna discuss your story here in just a moment.

we're gonna kind of get rolling with that.

But when a child arrives, you realize my words, how out of control

we probably are, and I know yours

Absolutely.

dimension to it.

I do think that part of our journey is realizing how little

control we really do have.

Mm-hmm.

A younger age, I think I thought I could control and bend

everyone around me to my will

Yep.

and we just realized we'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 get us started on your journey that you've

been on, I actually believe that's a process that has at least one, maybe more

significant events along the way that get

Oh,

point.

So

absolutely.

having said that, I wanna talk a little bit about Will, growing up

pastor's kid, man, I love talking to pastor's kids and like finding

out all the issues they dealt with.

That's so

Uhhuh.

get into Corner to Corner and then your family to get into talking

about the book and all that.

what was revealed to you through the book.

So tell me what you want to about your, you know, the early years.

Yeah.

So for context for me, I was born in Durham, North Carolina.

Like we were a southern family.

Mom and dad both from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Both went to University of North Carolina, you know, back in the day.

so very southern right.

Coming out of college.

my dad was a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Right.

and so he was, you know, doing campus ministry at Duke and NC

State, and we were like this young, Ministry family in Durham.

and he felt a call to be like a pastor.

Pastor, right?

Because campus ministers, they're kind of like sidekicks, you know, he wants to

go to seminary, do the full deal, right?

but so he ends up, taking our whole family up to New England for him to,

go to seminary and he, the plan was go up to the north and then come back

to the south where we're from, right?

and instead he got caught up in the church planting movement up in the northeast.

And think of church planters as the people who are most entrepreneurial

in the church world, right?

they are gonna start a new church where there might be a community

that doesn't have one right.

Kind of vibe.

and so he started church in the office of a gas station in 1985.

The kind of place where like you bring your own folding chair and or

tambourine, right, was kind of the vibe.

and by the mid nineties had grown it to, on some Sundays there

were 1000, 2000 people there.

it was a wild ride.

And I think the joy of seeing that for me and probably my two brothers,

I have a younger sister, but she was born when I was 11, so she grew

up with kind of a different version of our family in a lot of ways.

But was that you could build something in the world.

Like you could take a crazy swing with a ton of risk, Or what people perceive

as risk and do something awesome.

That was the upside.

I think the downside was, you know, the family rhythms and my

dad and I have had a lot of good conversation and healing around this.

This is no surprise, but back in that day, it was very much

the mission is the mission and the family is kind of secondary.

Right.

And so I think a lot of my childhood, there was a sense of my parents

love me and care for me, and also I better figure it out, and so I

think that also helped, me and my brothers we're all entrepreneurial.

We've all built stuff in our still 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, you know, state school, like at that

point, like 30,000 students because I wanted to see what ministry looked

like in a large secular environment.

It always seems silly to me to wanna be in ministry and to go to

a place with only Christians or something, do you know what I mean?

Like, there's just too much echo chamber for me.

and so I go to that college.

And instead of being on a path to seminary, I fall in love with

being in a rock and roll band.

I grew out my hair to my shoulders.

Like I'm talking Italian soccer player hair, right?

learned how to be a lead guitarist and a songwriter and all the things.

coming outta college, I put a new band 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.

our high watermark.

I was a big Wilco fan.

We got to open up for Wilco once, you know, I was like,

I have made it, you know?

but what it started off as a sincere expression of my

creativity turned into an ego play.

Like I'm building the will 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 through this epidemiologist who was an

expert in the AIDS pandemic, This is early two thousands.

and this guy, made us meet at his house for six months to get ready

for a trip to Nairobi, right?

And so every week we're reading like doctrinal things.

We're reading, global economic papers, right?

What happens if the energy price is pegged at this in North

America to Sub-Saharan Africa?

Like really complicated stuff that I was just like a dumb

rock kid, you know what I mean?

Like, I felt like, I was like, what is happening?

and so I go on this trip And we all split up, right?

So we weren't like staying at a hotel downtown kind of vibe.

I was staying with this Kenyan family on the edge of one of the worst slums

in Sub-Saharan Africa, no running water.

it's a cliche story, like middle class white boy has to go to Africa

to realize poverty's real, but it is 100% what happened to me.

And I came back from that, with my worldview blown up, and I didn't even

know I had a worldview until then.

You know what I mean?

and I felt nauseous, honestly.

Like how can this exist in the world?

And this isn't what we're all talking about.

How old

You know what I mean?

I was 22.

All right, so a couple quick questions before we keep moving forward.

Was the rock star.

Era, well, we'll use the term era.

sure.

rockstar era?

Mm-hmm.

Was there any rebellion with that, 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 our granddaughters 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

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 back on and say, you know what, I

was just sort of rebelling just to, stick it to mom and dad.

Honestly, no.

my dad had also introduced me to led Zeppelin and Three Dog Night,

That's a

right?

And the Beatles, like the Rolling Stones were a bridge too far, I think, for him,

he needed the cleaner British invasion.

But I mean, it was Jimi Hendrix that made me fall in love with guitar, you know?

I was like, if you can make that sound with that thing,

I have to learn how to do it.

And so if anything, my parents were very enthusiastic, like true story

my senior year of high school.

'cause I was determined to be the best guitar player I knew, Like,

I've always been very goal oriented.

and so I spent a winter in Massachusetts where I turned my parents' basement

into a Jimi Hendrix shrine.

Like I painted the entire door on the inside to the basement with Jimi

Hendrix face from a cover of an album.

And then I locked myself in there and I just wood shed it on the guitar, you know?

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 thousand people losing their minds, right?

That is a uniquely good feeling in the world, right?

and so my own internal values alignment started to shift.

Does that make sense?

Like,

Yeah, it

yeah.

and that's a good self-awareness.

I realized that when I was doing some 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 the deal instead of what's the real deal.

Totally.

and we can kind of get outta whack there.

there's something I wanna address about you growing up though,

that you had in your book.

I'm on, mean, I've got a physical copy here so that

Yeah.

uh, page one 60 and I just highlighted this.

We are poor for Jesus, and that is the right way to follow him.

Yeah.

and that was truthfully my challenge with Southern.

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 sucked into Prosperity Gospel, which has

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

liked it better

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

need for that.

So we won't go

Yeah.

tell me about how you thought about 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 a really clear mon money lesson

from their parents, right?

It's mostly they pick it up through what I would refer to as osmosis.

You know what I mean?

It's just kinda, they're picking it up in little bits and drips and drabs that

they feel or hear in the home, you know?

So, ooh, money is something to be scared of, right?

Or bills are always bad, right?

There's all sorts of ways that I think we could pick that up.

And in my own childhood, what happened for me was, my parents very much so had

a sense of we are on mission for Jesus, which means, that we're gonna be broke.

Right.

And they didn't ever come right out and straight up say

that, do you know what I mean?

But it was in, and again, I've talked 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

like, oh, we would take that kind of trip, you know, referring to

another family, doing some kind of ski trip or something in the winter.

but we've made a decision to follow Jesus so we can't.

Right.

and so it equated in my mind that there's only one way to follow Jesus.

Right.

and I think anytime you make a hard and fast rule about how to interact

with money, that's actually when you're in the most danger, wherever

you're landing on that rule.

Right?

If you're like, I should only be uber wealthy, and that's the only plan that

God has for me, Ooh, good luck, buddy.

You might be rolling the dice on what God intends, right?

And conversely, if you're like, I could only be broke for Jesus, 'cause

that's what righteousness looks like, I would say, oh no, you're starting

to touch on self-righteousness.

Be careful, right?

so fast forward, you know, in my own journey, when we launched a nonprofit as

my wife and I did, it made all the sense in the world for me to repeat the patterns

of being downwardly mobile for Jesus.

You know what I mean?

that felt like a really safe and comfortable place.

and I think it was shaped by those uninvestigated childhood things.

And it is no longer how I view it.

how'd you erase that?

'cause there, there are a lot of people outside of church world or religion that

Yeah.

with money, it almost seems like it's a double whammy or triple or whatever.

When, we bring scripture or we

Mm-hmm.

you know, when we bring religion into it, give us, give us your

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 situation recently where I thought I had.

Mm,

But it reared back up

mm-hmm.

and something

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Ooh, maybe I don't have that resolved at 60 something years old.

Yeah.

And let me be clear, what I was trying to say was I no longer

affirm what I grew up with.

But unwinding it from my heart and my body is a different thing.

the only way I know how to do this is to be honest, right?

Like, I would feel safer if I had X amount of money in the bank.

Oh, really?

That's where you're getting your sense of safety.

Whew.

We're not in the God territory anymore.

You know what I mean?

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 important enough to be in my social circle.

there's a million ways it shows up, but the only way I know how to really

get at it is one, be honest, be honest with what's coming up for you.

are there things that around money that make you feel like you are the man?

that's a great indicator.

Do some curiosity work there.

Are there things where you feel terrified about money?

Great place to do some curiosity work, right?

And then actually do the work 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 saw my 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?

With what's going on with financial resources, and not have some

sort of thing you need to heal.

Right?

and personally, I think that the ultimate place to arrive

at is where you go, oh, huh.

Money is a tool for doing what God has called me to do in the world.

Amazing.

Right?

and if God owns the cattle on a thousand Hills, I don't have to, like, I can own

what he gives me to do with, you know,

I know the thing that bothered me as I realized that my mood went

up and down based on balance.

My wife and I, you know, we've been married almost 37 years,

been together for 40 plus.

man, congratulations.

It's like, yeah, thanks.

and we kinda realized it's like, you know what?

Why is our mood this way now versus this?

And, you know, a lot of it's that, that I think that tension between,

you know, we really are citizens of the kingdom of God, but yet we

somehow seem to be living in Babylon

Yeah.

we start doing this Babylonian stuff and mindset.

And anyway, that's, that's another topic.

Yeah.

I don't think we'll get to it, but I would really love to know, I know we were kind

of going along the path of your journey.

Yeah,

want to allow some time, 'cause this corner to corner is fascinating to me.

yeah,

and I think with the people we have leaders in business and ministry, I

Absolutely.

love to hear some things about that.

Then we're gonna, some things going on in your family to kind of get

to where, what allowed you to write or forced you to write this book?

No Elevator to Everest, but tell us about Corner to Corner.

Yeah, so, let me pick back up the story here so you get context,

coming back from that trip, right.

I would argue that God often gives us the gentle whisper, Hey, this

is where I want you in your life.

And that trip to Nairobi was that gentle whisper, right?

but I tuned it out, right?

Like a teenager, here's a loud thumping in their car.

They turn down the volume instead of getting it fixed, right?

and often I think the loving sledgehammer comes next, right?

for me, my wife and I, when we got married, 2004, we had a

health crisis on our honeymoon.

And I'll just say this, it's never a good sign when your honeymoon

ends in the emergency room, right?

and it led to like the band thing was gone.

The life we thought we were gonna build is gone, right?

And there were two years of really intense suffering.

You know, some medical suffering as 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

more sure than ever that God is, is real.

We're a little more like iffy on like religion.

and we're sure that if we are gonna 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, but as a lived reality every day.

And we didn't know how to do it.

And so we moved into a historically low income neighborhood in

Nashville, 18 years ago, right?

And this is a neighborhood that has all the stats and all the stories, And we

moved in and my wife got a job working behind bars at the men's prison, as a

former offender job training specialist.

A fancy way of saying she helped people come home to jobs in

that tornado of a moment, right?

Of coming out of prison and back into the community.

and so we started doing life in that neighborhood.

oftentimes, with guys coming in and outta prison, all that stuff.

what we saw over time was there are these incredible people with all

these god-given passions, skills, and drive, but don't have a bridge

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 creative and, you know, to, excuse the

language, but we should be bad asses at economic development, right?

and I would argue Christians should be 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 to corner with this vision, okay?

Economic development relationship kingdom.

and what we learned over a few years was that entrepreneurship was

the right way to do that for us.

And so we started this program that gave underestimated entrepreneurs the

tools they needed to plan, start and grow their own small business, right?

Using like the Lean Canvas model, very popular and kind of

business startup communities.

Who's your target customer?

What problem are you solving for them?

What's your financial model that will actually make sense?

You know, all the things.

And we started holding that at like a local rec center.

and we were very iterative.

You know, I come from software development 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 testing out this entrepreneurial program and

I was like, do we have something here?

You know, you're never sure.

until our first graduation right here, we've got 13 of these new

entrepreneurs and one of them is sharing about her business to a

crowd of about 40 business leaders.

And she was a 13-year-old Who came every 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 this vision about how, she's creating a line

of custom business cards, and buttons so that 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 end of Q2, I'm gonna sell a hundred

units, And this business leader here in town, in Nashville, she stood

up and she goes, I'm buying your first 100 units tonight, darling.

And then another business leader stood up and I'm buying your second 100 units.

And you visibly saw this girl who was a little nervous talking in front of people.

Her shoulders were kind of down.

You saw her shoulders go back, her chin come up, and you witnessed the

moment that her horizon got larger.

Right.

And I was like, Ooh, this, this is it.

And so we went from one site, you know, 13 people.

now as of this last week, we've now graduated over 1600 entrepreneurs.

Last year we put 37 million back into the neighborhood economy, and

this year we're on track to clear 40.

it has been the joy of my life to see neighbors who are often told,

Hey, low income neighbor, the best you get to hope for is stability.

to hear instead, no, no, no.

I believe that you have given to you by God what you need to build something that

can turn you into the economic engine of your family and your neighborhood.

And you don't have to do it alone.

We're gonna do it with you.

Will, I've got a few questions I wanna follow up, but I,

there's one I wanna back up.

Tiffany fall in love with rockstar Will 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 that question, Tim, is the answer is both.

I have a theory, Tim, that all of us have a moment where we peak, right?

I have the benefit of knowing the exact moment I peaked, and I played

a show at a party, on a Saturday night, playing rock and roll guitar,

crazy house party kind of vibes.

And this line of young ladies walks by and most of 'em are dressed up super fancy,

you know, like really dressed to impress.

And that was not my style.

And then there's this one beautiful young woman wearing a t-shirt that said

Windy Gap, which was a Christian, summer camp that my dad used to preach at.

And I leaned away from the microphone and I just said, nice shirt.

That's all I said, little did I know that was Tiffany who

would go on to become my wife.

Um, but that, that she walked out that night going, oh my gosh, that felt nice.

Who was that guy And she couldn't stop thinking about it.

Right.

Well, the next morning I didn't know my, at that point my parents had moved

back to North Carolina and my dad was a pastor at like a big church there

in town and Tiffany and all of her college roommates went to that church.

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 piano with a song I wrote while a slideshow of

my mission trip is up on stage, right?

Like, I could not have planned a better, a game like slightly dangerous rock and roll

guy Saturday night, like songwriter who loves 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, is that you really, I hate to say

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.

You know what I mean?

That's also how many of us men marry way up the food chain

when things like that happen.

Absolutely.

Which is awesome.

So, one thing that I loved hearing, and I actually saw this is I think you mentioned

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 systems engineer from Georgia Tech, so kinda

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

leadership teams with strategy and 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.

doesn't accept some of the systems, process and structures that

do work well in, we'll call it Babylon or whatever business world.

Yeah.

so give me some pros and cons.

Some good, the bad, maybe the ugly of that background.

You have, fortunately you were running this ministry, I believe.

It wasn't like you were trying

Yeah,

into something

no.

if you plug into something else, buddy, you're the devil.

I'm telling you.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, no, no.

So talk a little bit about that 'cause we'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 a dynamic tension, in any org, but it really

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 love on the people, right?

That is an important, it's a whole side of the river, right?

We need that bank.

And on the other side is the systems and the vision of what this thing

could be if it were performing at an efficient level, right?

And I think if you walk too far in one direction or the other.

You're no longer in the river.

The river is the org.

You know, and it needs that dynamic tension.

And I think sometimes people who get into ministry, they, they apply a

pastoral lens to everything such that hard conversations get harder, you know?

and actually having key performance indicators feels like a weapon

rather than an invitation for growth, you know what I mean?

Whereas in, in the, you know, in the business world, you're like,

okay, well how did you, do you know, like, you had an event.

How many people attended?

Oh man, we only got 30.

Oh really?

You only got 30?

I thought the goal was 75.

Yeah, it was, but I guess we 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, we go, 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 conversion rate per click through?

You know what I mean?

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 10,000 of these entrepreneurs in 10 years.

You know, like, and we, we have heart centered, like we wanna move with neighbor

at the speed of relationship, and we want to do it with this view of excellence and

excellence that doesn't crush neighbor.

Right?

There's the dynamic, that we, I mean, we talk about this nonstop.

What's interesting is I to bible school in my early to mid fifties, hung out

with a lot of Christians, and I do wanna say this, I am a Christian, I

love Christians, even though some of the things 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 bring heart into those highly efficient

and effective business systems than it is to bring those business

systems into that heart structure.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, as a pastor's kid, as someone 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, without naming names, you know, where I'll

have, people are like, man, we so wanna partner with corner to quarter.

We're so excited.

And I'll say, awesome.

Here's an outline of the first two events we can do.

How many, you know, what's the recruitment plan?

How do we execute this?

And three weeks later, somebody's like, 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 go and figure it out, you know?

So the cool thing Will is I'm pretty confident that that first podcast

that I listened to was shortly around when Corner to Corner was.

I mean, some of these numbers you gave are in that tone of man, we're rocking.

Things are awesome.

yeah.

Somewhere along the way, some things have kind of, come at you.

you mentioned the sledgehammer of love or something like that, that the

Mm-hmm.

what I've seen in my life.

Mm-hmm.

we all know we could do it incrementally and over time and

things like that, but usually

Mm-hmm.

it comes with a catalytic event or a series of events.

Yeah.

Give us a little background on the family and some of the other things that happened

Yeah.

first podcast episode that I listened to

Yeah.

in the book, and this will kinda lead us into the last few minutes.

We've got to talk about the book.

Yeah.

So what happened essentially was on the outside, like in my work life,

things were like, you know, roughly up into the right, not, you know, in a

perfect line, but directionally correct.

but internally at home, you know, both our kids are through domestic adoption.

My wife and I were so blessed to grow our family that way.

but when my, my son started on the path of diagnoses and, and disability and all

that, I applied everything I knew how to do, which was do more work and solve this.

And there was no, this doesn't work that way.

You know, there's no way for a KPI on this, you know what I mean?

I, it was like an internal emotional suffering that's hard to quite name.

Right.

And in the face of that, my wife, experienced acute

clinical depression, right?

She was diagnosed with, something called complex PTSD, both from

kind of some childhood trauma stuff as well as, our daily experience.

and that meant that there were days where it was hard for her

to get outta bed, you know?

I should say I've got full permission from her to share here.

and so I was trying to solve for my son and solve for my wife, right?

And it was not working.

my wife was like, Hey, she found this amazing trauma, therapy place that really

helped her, like a retreat center, right?

Like an intensive retreat where they take 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 we theorized enough as a family?

Right?

Like, never a good sign, by the way, if you're inventing words

to debate your spouse, right?

and my wife's an Enneagram eight, if you know that world to challenge your role.

and she, she's like, no, no, no, you need to go.

And so I went, and day one I was there.

Very much so with a chip on my shoulder, right?

Like, I'm here to get tools to help fix my wife.

Just so arrogant, right?

By the end of day two, I was cracked, open, weeping, and knew

that I was there for me, right?

And what that place started to do for me was give me the tools to compassionately

connect with myself, right?

And kind of get under the hood of my own heart, but I was coming home.

my context was about to get hard again.

And so I asked the question, can I turn my own life into a joy lab?

I got a notebook and I would write out, here's the experiment for today.

This is what joy would feel like.

And it led to really practical things like, my son with his sleeping

challenges, he was sleeping better by this point, but most of his days he

would wake up about five or five 30,

And I was like, okay, if I don't want to wake up to like, you know, he would

always wake up yelling Daddy, right?

And like, you, you want to wake up with a 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 differently and have agency in this, I'm gonna

set my alarm clock for an hour before that, which means I need to go to bed.

Really early and Oh yeah, I need to move a coffee maker into the bedroom so

that I don't wake him up in the kitchen.

Right?

And I built out the place and the space to then get still right?

And then I started experimenting.

What would this daily joy look like?

And from that, experience, I wrote the book No Elevator to Everest, which

the whole idea is, I think so many of us are waiting for our context

to change, to get better, right?

Like, I'll be better when X happens in my life, when I get the job I

really want, or when my spouse loves me 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 your entire life up for failure, right?

And so, like, then the challenge becomes, is there a way for me.

To not live perfectly, but more and more every day to live in this sense of

abiding joy no matter what my context is.

And so the book is like the stories and some of the concepts and then practical

practices rather for so that you can try these things on and then kind of invent

your own, to say, oh wait, actually I'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 the video, I'm looking up the hill.

'cause our RV's parked in the alley behind 'em.

So we've got our five-year-old and 3-year-old granddaughters

just almost within reach.

And they

Hmm.

here with us last night.

And five-year-old this morning was talking about joy.

Hmm.

she crawled in bed with us and she 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

through the book or I scanned it.

didn't read it in depth, but I scanned the whole thing.

I lost count of how many televisions and windshields broken.

Yeah.

And let me follow up with one thing.

'cause I wanna, I want to emphasize, you know, a lot of people say, oh yeah, we've

kind of got it rough too and all that.

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 it says, 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 leading thoughts and that is not the way

I'm wired to think about my life

Mm-hmm.

when we were going through bankruptcy and all

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

was thinking if I just swerve to 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 to get into a few of the techniques and

the practices that you came up because I mean, this, this, we're talking

about a rough situation here, right?

Yeah.

I mean, so to paint the picture from the book, you just read that line, that was a

text message that I received from my wife.

Right.

and so there were days where I would come home, I'd go home at lunch

from work or whatever to check on her and not know, like, would she

be okay, that kind of intensity.

and then with my son, he has multiple diagnoses.

you know, autism, a global cognitive disability over the last two years.

he was diagnosed with a rare genetic muscular disease.

so like, just the journey continues, right?

And there would be times where he would be so dysregulated as you mentioned,

Tim, that he kicked my windshield so 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?

so to say that my daily life is really intense is to be pretty mild, you know?

and for the longest time it 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 I love him, and he's a kid who

feels joy, huge and sadness huge.

And you know, everything's very 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 our life are not problems to solve, but

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 intense moments and then be there to hold

them after, you know, and, and with my wife specifically, like for the

longest time I was trying to fix her depression, which by the way, that's

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'm gonna fix your depression, right?

instead what we got to was a place of, 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.

I can hold this space with you and you tell me what would be supportive.

I'm not running away, but it's not mine to solve.

Right.

and holding that dynamic tension in our relationship.

Yeah.

So one, one thing that I, this goes back to an earlier conversation,

will, and this will help us land this

Mm-hmm.

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 where people can find the book.

Yeah.

So I would say first, like my view is we have everything we need right now.

Right.

like from a biblical standpoint, we would say we're image bearers, right?

Like the creator of the universe created us.

That's a pretty good thing 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 to be with you forever, who will be in you?

Right?

But the reality is, if most of us only learn how to do work out here, we

are missing what's happening in here.

We're missing that connection with the abiding spirit.

Right?

so the practical techniques, right, was I needed to carve

out enough space like stillness.

Where I'm not doing, but rather I'm being, and I'm not being with the

lens of self condemnation, but one with compassion and curiosity, right?

I think most of us avoid going inward because we hate going inward because we,

all we do is punish ourselves, right?

Like you pizza, look what you 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, my work where I got curious and still.

And so this is a practice in the book that we call the emotional trailhead.

and just like a trail into 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 three miles in, there's a waterfall, right?

But you actually have to walk that 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?

We don't wake up neutral.

We wake up totally flooded by all sorts of hopes, fears, anxieties.

I can't believe she said that to me before bed, right?

Like, whatever it is, we wake up that way and then we just try to go about life.

And so the practice is to get still for about 10 minutes.

Grab your favorite drink with caffeine Mine.

It's a cup of coffee right by the bed.

I get still, and I think of my emotions as the, the landscape, right?

And I go, what am I feeling the biggest right now?

Oh, and it might be, oh, you know what I'm feeling fear, huh?

Curious.

I wonder what's causing me to feel fear, and let's take it to money.

You go, oh man, I actually thought my tax position at the end of this

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, that feels 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?

Oh, you know what?

Well, I grew up in a family that said I better perform and in order to be okay or

in order to get love, is that what the god of 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 like the invitation to the prodigal son.

Right?

The party is started in the party's for you.

I love you.

Right?

That's what the spirit is saying to us all the time, right?

But as we stay with that trailhead of curiosity, we end

up going, I mean, 10 minutes.

And you go, oh man, I am believing the lie that this tax thing is the

biggest thing going in my life.

Whew, Lord, would you help me to release this fear and

step into the day differently?

And man, it's 10 minutes.

And you know, at first it might feel hard or awkward, or you might

even have a hard time naming your emotions, but you work that out

for a couple weeks in a row, right?

And I promise you, you will be a different human.

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 sure Amazon and stuff like that.

I've got a copy of it here.

Do that.

And I'm,

yeah,

you say one more thing before we wrap up here, but

yeah,

they connect with you?

yeah.

So, on Instagram it's Will Joy acuff, all one word, no underscores.

and then you can go to no elevator to everest.com.

you can sign up there for my substack and get like a free kind

of guide on some of the practices.

And of course, Amazon's huge guys, I'm all for supporting local bookstores, but

also buy it on Amazon and leave a review.

that's how people are finding out about the book.

Excellent.

Any other quick just Holy Spirit led encouragement for someone who

might going through struggles?

anything else Will, before we wrap up and finish?

Yeah, I would just, anybody who feels utterly stuck right, right now, I would

just encourage them to tell somebody that they love, that they feel that way,

and ask that person to pray with them.

Start there sometimes when we are totally stuck.

That's the best thing we can do, is be honest with someone who loves us.

Hmm.

That's good.

will Acuff, thank you so much.

The book is No Elevator to Everest Shift from Survive to Thrive

through Spirit-led Self-Awareness.

I'll put a copy up here for those watching on YouTube.

Yeah.

I enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tim.

This is, man, it's tapped into a lot of the themes that we have been looking at

here at Seek Go Create for some time and Will's story and all that he's doing.

Just really emphasize the business and ministry merging together

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 here and we will see everyone next week.