EP. 171: The Power of Long-Term Business Vision: Looking 10 Years Out with Will Fuller

In this powerful episode, Jennifer Dawn sits down with Will Fuller, CEO of Acacia Originals, to discuss his unique strategy of creating a long-term business vision, Will shares how he looked 10 years into the future of his company and didn’t like what he saw, prompting a complete change in his approach to growth. This conversation is a masterclass in strategic foresight, intentionality, and embracing a mindset that prioritizes purpose over profit.

The Power of Long-Term Business Vision: Looking 10 Years Out with Will Fuller

Jennifer Dawn: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Happy Productive Podcast. I am, if you can see me, I’m practically bouncing up and down in my chair because I’m so excited to talk with my guest today, Will Fuller, who is the CEO of Acacia Originals, will welcome to the show.

Will Fuller: Thank you, Jennifer. It’s, it’s been a while. It’s really good to see you. There’s never a time where you and I don’t have some great conversations.

Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and you guys, what you don’t know is Will and I have actually worked together for quite some time, but we haven’t seen each other in a while, so we’re both like really excited to be here. Really excited to jump into this conversation. I know it’s gonna be a good one, so sit down and buckle up ’cause today is gonna be a lot of fun. Now you guys you don’t already know will he leads a best in class team known for solving complex design, manufacturing, and installation challenges, and he works on very high profile and very demanding projects. He partners closely with a lot of architectural firms and top tier general contractors so that they can bring elegant brand defining environments to life. I have seen some videos of the work that Will does and you guys, it is absolutely jaw dropping. Amazing. But Will, would you just take a quick minute and just tell everybody a little bit of just your background and how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing today with Acacia?

Will Fuller’s Journey: From College Job to Industry Leader

Will Fuller: Sure. I’ll keep it short, although it’s a very long story. I, I actually started in this in September of 1976 as my first paid job, so I’m, I’m getting right up on a half a century, which doesn’t even sound. I, I, I did this, got into it only to just make ends meet as a very young man through college and thought I would go to college and become an architect until I decided not to become an architect. And turned it into a business. Went through the ranks to do a lot of the common stuff that people do in this kind of business until we kept pushing the envelope never stopping to get to do the kind of projects that we do. And really simply put, it’s even not really about the stuff we do. I’m gonna borrow a phrase from a good friend. We are essentially a millwork company. A lot of people don’t even know what that is, but doesn’t, doesn’t matter too much. We’re a millwork company masquerading as change agents.

Jennifer Dawn: Hmm.

Will Fuller: So it’s not even really about the business of the millwork, it’s about the other part. I,

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, tell, go deeper into that. ’cause I know there’s gonna be some people that go “What?” Say what? Like dive into that a little bit. Will.

Will Fuller: Okay. Credit to credit due a, a great guy named Oz Hillman, who I met in the nineties. I borrowed the phrase from him, I wanna give him credit. And the, the premise behind it is, is that there really is not anything you can do. Say, not, say, not do whatever that doesn’t affect a myriad of other people. So whatever you do, choose wisely. And realize that it is a bit like playing, even though I can’t play this, let’s call it 3D, four D, five D chess, and that, that the ripple effect beyond is as much as you can conceive. So again, it’s not, it’s not to make you overanalyze or overthink or otherwise, just realize the impact you can have in your lifetime. Is as great as you believe it can be, but it requires a lot different thinking. Okay. Thereby the change part. So it’s that old thing of a butterfly flaps, its wings in Africa and whatever happens over here. So it it, it is like that.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, I love it. And obviously as a coach, like thinking is something I’m helping clients with every single day, but, and, and in my own business as well. What’s that? Isn’t there like an Einstein quote that the thinking that caused the problem isn’t gonna be the thinking that that solves it and that we have to change our thinking, right? If we wanna evolve, if we wanna change, grow, and do bigger things.

Navigating Change and Growth with an Entrepreneurial Mindset

Will Fuller: absolutely. Yeah. And, and and being, being truly comfortable with change, which is a little bit of fallacy. Maybe sometimes you’re not ever gonna always be comfortable. So don’t feel bad if you’re, if you’re not, is kinda like courage, right? Courage is doing something in spite of being afraid. It’s not, it doesn’t say you’re not afraid. So same thing with change is that, how bad do you want what you want as opposed to staying where you are. The price of staying where you are oftentimes is greater than the price of making the change or moving. And I know, and we will get to this later, but I mean it’s probably, this is a seasonal life. Where I’m in is I wanna leave an impact for, let’s just say a lot of generations and we’ll tie how many that is to maybe later. This focus on long-term impact is a key part of the **long-term business vision**.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love that. Okay. Speaking of this season of life that you’re in what are you building these days and why does it matter?

Will Fuller: Building a few things. Okay. So the easiest one is what I’ve done for a long time, and we are, we’re going through a massive factory expansion. It’s several million dollars just, just, just for the structure not including just the, what we call the productive assets inside of it, but we are we had a major competitor. Man, God bless ’em. They’re a great 90-year-old company, third generation that decided to close. They didn’t have to close it. It was a change. To move into a different season, shall we say. So I honor their choice and there were only legitimate competitor in the region and they just closed. And we knew about a year before they closed, that was gonna happen. So we have, we knew that was gonna happen and we wanted to. Understand what the strategy would look like to consume the market that they were avoiding and expand on that. And part of that was to increase our factory threefold. So we’re tripling our size. But it was also important to do, to start that initiative well before they closed.

Jennifer Dawn: Hmm.

Will Fuller: Before somebody, before others came in there, did something similar. Anyway we’re expanding on what we’re doing. We’re, as is common, you reach these various thresholds within the evolution of a business and kinda like the change thing, right? Which you mentioned earlier with Einstein, a lot of the things that got us to where we, we got to were not going to get us any further, and it wasn’t because what was was bad. It just wasn’t enough. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn because some of this involved people who had been here for a very long time. This is a common challenge when pursuing a **long-term business vision**.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah.

Will Fuller: Yeah, so there’s that. We have another dynamic which is really gonna looking to start another manufacturing aspect we’ve been working on for about four years. But we parked it to the curb and left it idling for a bit. So because our focus was becoming distracted. it’s essentially taking what we do, leveraging our, our experience, all of our assets, whether it’s intellectual property, factory team, all that sort of stuff in a whole nother way to produce something that’s scalable, even more than what we’re doing.

Leaving a Legacy: Mentorship and Future Generations

Jennifer Dawn: Mm-hmm.

Will Fuller: Yeah, there’s that and just, I, I’m up to, I’m this close to. And I, I promise no pictures are gonna come out, even though I’d love to I’m up to, to, to grandchild number eight here pretty quickly. So it, it just becomes legacy, it’s how can I help? In our family, we call ’em the littles. How, how can I, my wife, help the littles move into whatever they want in life without having to go through these super crazy long learning curve that we did.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah. Isn’t that true? Helping them to, to get there a little faster than us with the old fashioned trial and error.

Will Fuller: Yeah. Yeah. I, I had no entrepreneurial people in my family at all, so it was it was a longer journey than, than I would’ve liked it to have been.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah. Yeah. I love that though. That, but setting up the, the future generations to succeed. And I think part of what you’re also saying is not that we’re handing it to them, but that we’re teaching them the things that we didn’t know that we had to, to, to come to find out. But I’m always with my kids. I don’t have grandkids yet, will I’m, I’m getting excited for it, I wasn’t quite ready, but now I’m kind of like, alright. My oldest daughter, she just turned 26 and she’s “mom, it might be time for me to start thinking about maybe, settling down.” I was like, alright, I, I don’t wanna rush you, but. I’m really excited, like that phase of my life is still in front of me and I’m excited to see that start to, to manifest on their timelines, not mine, but the fact that congratulations that you have eight grandchildren now. That’s so fantastic.

Will Fuller: It is. I love it. I love it. It is, it. is truly a whole nother season, and it, and it, it expanded my thinking greatly.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah. And even like with my children, like I don’t wanna do it for them ’cause I rob them of doing the work themselves and figuring it out. But I definitely wanna teach them things that, were hard, hard fought, hard one, that if I can shorten that curve for them, I definitely want to do that.

Will Fuller: I, I don’t, speaking for our family, for no one else’s, we don’t, don’t feel as though we truly love them. If we hand it all to them we, we, we do them a great disservice in, in what it takes to learn to discover their own values. Find their own tenacity in things, but know that we’ve always got their back and, and, and on that, that whole part of just. Helping them learn this stuff quicker than we do. I know all my, my, my kids and my grandkids are all different. And it’s just asking them, actually, it’s better if they, if they ask. But if you do ask, ask them if they want to know. Just don’t start teaching them, because they’ll, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll yeah, they’ll ask when they want to. And I love the fact my, my oldest is 35. My youngest is 30 in terms of my kids. And I love that, that we still. We still have a great relationship in that we talk to each other. I ask them stuff like, “what do you guys think about this?” If we did something like this, or what would that look like? It’s, it’s just fascinating and super fulfilling, and it’s all part of a grander **long-term business vision**.

Jennifer Dawn: yeah, absolutely. And so brilliant. I just wanna call that out, that wait for them to ask. I know my oldest daughter right now I’m just always I wanna jump right in and help her and I’ll get the “stop coaching me mom.” And I’m like, “okay, you’re right. You’re right, i’m just here to be your mom, here to be your friend,” but I’m just, “you know when you’re ready and you want some help, I’m here to help you,” but wait for them to ask. I love it.

Will Fuller: yeah, yeah. My wife and I are both trying to, I won’t say rediscover ’cause we didn’t know, we’re trying to realize. What does an honest, matriarchal, and patriarchal relationship look like? Because with the passing of both my parents, I’m now the patriarchal of the family. Like it or not. I’m the oldest living member of the family. and it just goes to, no matter what age you are, you better always be maturing.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, no question. And I love that you’re even thinking about that because I often see so many people not thinking about that, but to just bring some awareness in it so that you can be in that role to the best of your abilities.

Will Fuller: Yeah. Thank you.

The Power of Long-Term Business Vision: What Happens When You Look 10 Years Out

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah, I love it. All right. A few years ago, I don’t know exactly how long you and I were on a call together and you said something that really piqued my curiosity, and obviously it’s been years and I still have not forgotten that call that you and I were on and we were talking about your business. We were talking about the future of your business, and you said that based on where things were headed. Now, this is before a lot of this expansion and. This competitor going outta business. All of this stuff had even happened. But you said that you took some time and you looked into the future. You basically were just like, “look at where my business is now and let me take this into the future.” And when you looked into the future as far as like where your business was headed, you didn’t like what you saw and that was part of what was this process that you were going through to actually start to make some changes so that when you looked ahead, you were happy. With the business that you saw, and I’ve never forgotten that, and I would love to talk to you about that just a little bit. And so would you mind just sharing a little bit of the process that you went through to one step away and take some time to really look at where your business was headed in the future? And it’s a little bit around that process. This intentional act is crucial for creating a **long-term business vision**.

Will Fuller: Sure. Wow. Okay. Did, did, I don’t know that I realize it left such a mark. So the best way I think for me to do this is to simultaneously tell you the story while tell you what I was doing. Okay. Maybe could, without one or the other, it wouldn’t make much sense. So typically each year I take about a week, sometimes a little bit more just to. I have a bit of a sabbatical retreat. My only purpose is to consider the next two to three years directionally for, mainly for our organization. Okay. Because and we won’t get into this right now, but, but our family now is doing the same thing actually as well. Okay. So we actually have an annual meeting of our family, do the same thing, and then we have quarterly times to get together to, to see how we’re coming along. That’s a different thing. So to this, I was doing that. I was, I was, I was away by myself and and I have a an amazing mentor. I’ve mentored with him for about seven or eight years, and amongst a lot of stuff he has taught me, he has taught me number one to, to realize that we have the capacity. To see into, I’m just gonna call it as it is and not try to sugarcoat it here too much. We have the capacity to see into more than one realm and the realm that we live in, that is the stuff that we see we can touch. It’s solid. That seems whatever it is, is the one most of us spend all of our time and focus in. But it’s just one. And I, I’m also a big fan of the movie, the Matrix and the, and the, and that what we experience in everyday life is, it, it is not the fullness of all reality. Matter of fact, I, I just read a book, short version. He didn’t write it. Somebody else wrote it about Elon Musk. It’s called *The Leadership Genus, Elon Musk*. And the first chapter was about how Elon Musk for years and never more so than now. ’cause there’s a lot of science to back it up. He believes that what we actually live and breathe in consciously, he calls it a simulation. Not that it’s none of it’s real, but it’s not as real as you think it is. But the point, so I do this, so I’m doing what my mentor had taught me to do for a few years, and I’m just, I’m just imagining, I’m completely clearing my mind. I’m saying, “okay, what does the future look like? Show me what a future looks like.” And in my mind, I’m thinking two to three years, that’s what I always do. So the moment I, I’m thinking two or three years, I hear “Will, why don’t you look 10?” “Oh.” “Okay. That wasn’t me.” It wasn’t my voice. And because I know where the voice came from, even though I didn’t know, I’d never done it before, that voice would never ask me to do something that I couldn’t do, never make me to look the fool never make me answer stuff. It only asked me to do something ’cause it was the right thing to do. Yeah. So I go, okay. So I, I do that and I’m still just in that place. And so as I’m doing this, I all of a sudden I see myself in a vehicle. It’s, it’s kind of dust. The sun is barely beginning to come up and, sorry, I’m just revisiting, getting my own mind right now. There’s, there’s wood in trees, there’s no structures or anything on me, and I’m just going down the road and it, and it’s, there’s a lot of like ground fog, right? We’ve all been through that, where it feels like you need to really back off and because you just can’t see very far. Headlights don’t help you anything. Ground fog. So I go, okay, I’m not really seen very far in this, 50 feet, 10 years. There’s a big gap there. And so I’m, I’m going along and then all of a sudden we probably all experience this too. The fog just suddenly clears and the moment a fog clears, I’m no longer in the vehicle on the road. I see my business 10 years out, and what I see is it’s huge. It’s a mammoth and you have to understand that that what we do truly is very complex, very fast moving, changes constantly, all this sort of stuff. This thing had become a beast. We were doing what we were doing. I don’t, didn’t have any impression about how well we were doing it. I would assume we were doing well. ’cause that’s just in our DNA we’re, we’re excellence freaks. Not perfectionists by the way, but excellence freaks and my heart just dropped. And I saw this and I go, I don’t want that. This is not what, this is not what I wanted to spend the next 10 years of my life doing. But I also realized at the time that I could have easily gotten there if I only looked at it two or three years at a time, like the frog in the boiling pot. Similar to that, you didn’t realize that’s where it was going until you got too far down the road. And I said, I do not want this. That was my biggest takeaway was that I needed to figure out how to unravel or distill or simplify what is typically an extraordinarily complex thing to do into something that’s not so much. Was that, it was, is that the story you were talking about? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Part of that really is for me is, being open-minded that we can do these things, right? So without getting too, too far deep in this either, have you ever heard that your pituitary gland is in the center of your brain, right? You’re familiar with it? Yeah. Alright. It’s commonly nicknamed a bunch of things, but a bunk thing is called your third eye. Yep. Okay? You know why it’s called your third eye? Because it’s, it’s, it’s allegedly where you have the capacity to see into things beyond these. Matter of fact, I have heard, I’ve never validated this, that you have rods and cones in your eyes, which facilitate sight. Yes. There are as many, and I’ve sometimes heard people say more rods and cones in your pituitary gland than in your eyes. Now why would that be? Oh, okay? It’s like a lot of things. It’s that, forgotten how to do a lot of this stuff. Yeah. Alright. And, and that’s not a criticism or an attack in anybody way. And that’s, that’s how I’ve approached it with, with the person that I’ve learned for. And I’ve actually learned some of the stuff from other people too. But this guy I’ve been with for a really long time. And what I love is just the practicality. In other words, can I use the stuff you’re teaching me or is just this ethereal stuff? That I just feel warm and fuzzy over. I, I, I fuzzy’s. Okay, but you last I can translate fuzzy into something actionable that brings about results I want. I’m not very interested in it. With this guy it’s all about practical. So anyway, I’ll

Finding Clarity: The Importance of Solitude and Self-Awareness

Jennifer Dawn: You said so many things in there. So many things. Okay, so I just wanna go touch back on a couple of things. First of all, I love that you take time every year by yourself completely alone, to really get out of that day to day. And whatever you’re doing with that time, and this goes to everybody who’s listening, whatever you’re doing with that time is, is your time. It’s very interesting that we’re talking because maybe like maybe six weeks ago, not that long ago, I did something similar and I didn’t even really know what I was doing. I just knew, like I just kept feeling this calling. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was just like. I need to go and I need to be by myself. And I don’t think I’ve ever taken a whole week by myself. I’ve taken a weekend or a day here and there, but I’ve never taken a whole week. Usually the family’s around, like we’re all doing stuff. And I just felt this calling. My husband came in my office and he saw the screen was up and. He was, he was like, “oh, you’re booking something.” I was like, “are you going somewhere?” And I’m like, “I think I am.” And I booked a week in Sedona, Sedona, Arizona. If you’ve never been, it’s just one of my most favorite places. The energy is so amazing there. I’m originally from Arizona. I live in New York, and Arizona always feels like going home for me and just, I love Sedona. So I book a week in Sedona, all by myself. My husband’s go, “honey, you deserve it. Have fun.” So I go to Sedona and while I’m there, this is gonna sound really crazy, will, but I was just like, I don’t want to eat. I don’t, I don’t want food. I don’t, I don’t want to eat. And I ended up doing, I think it was a four and a half, almost a five day water fast, which I didn’t really go there to do a water fast, but I just was like, I don’t want any food. I wasn’t really that hungry. I wanted to obviously hydrate. And then every day I would go out in the morning and I would hike for two or three hours. And because I’m on East coast time, I’d wake up at, 3:00 AM and I’d be on the mountain by five when the light was just starting. And I’d hike for two or three hours and just be out in it. And then in the evening, I’d usually go out again before I went to bed. And I did have to work during the day a little bit. But it was amazing to me that by the last day. The clarity, the insights, the ahas, and as I left Sedona, I just, I had so many things and I was just like journaling and writing these things down. And my husband, when I told him what was going on, he was like, “honey, it sounds like you’re on a vision quest.” I’m like. “What’s a vision quest?” And he is native Americans because he just wrote a new book and he, we did a lot of research around Native Americans and all these things, and he is native Americans, when they were at a time of transition, would go out into the wilderness all by themselves and they would not eat. So they would usually like, not be eating at all. And they would. It was a time for them to just get away from everything and receive whatever wisdom, insights, information. And I was like, by golly, I did just do a vision quest and I didn’t even know that that’s what was happening. And so when you said that you stepped away, you took a week for yourself. I just did that too. And I’m like, why have I not been doing this? Because it was such powerful, powerful time. To just get out of all of it and go somewhere. For me, that was energetically really aligned with me and who I am and where I often just get great insights and wisdom. You don’t have to do a water fast, everybody. I’m not saying that, but it was just like, it was just this being in alignment with what I felt called to do, and when I did that. I, I received so much great, great information and I’m transitioning my business right now and it was just like the perfect timing to receive that. So I just wanna call attention to that. ’cause I thought you mentioning it, I just did it like more business owners I feel like really need to do this for ourselves to take that time.

Will Fuller: Yes. And, and I won’t say that the same recipe needs to be the same for everybody, right? But see what you did resonates very much with along the lines of what I do, and I can tell you. I can tell you why it works for me, whether it’s the same for you or not. You have to be your own judge. But whether you realize it or not, you did a whole lot of things right, or or in a very good way, I should say, number one. Okay. And energy’s a very important word about almost all of this, so I have to displace myself from anything that’s typical. Alright, because in typical my mindset will follow along certain pathways. I need to disrupt it on purpose. Okay? It needs to be quiet. It, it needs to be surrounded in something I feel is beauty, which is extremely important. ’cause there’s an energetic dynamic relative to that. It takes me because I’m a guy and I’m slower. It takes me about two days to a hundred percent disconnect. Yeah. And about the beginning of day three is where, okay, I’m disconnected and I’m aware and, and to, to your fast part. I don’t typically fast during there, but the first couple of days I, I will fast or close. And the reason is simply this, right? So and I’m no health expert. That’s more my wife than me, and I’m grateful for that. The interesting thing about fasting to me is that it requires energy to digest food. And for me, I wanna maximize there’s multiple kinds of energy. Yeah. But I wanna maximize all the energy I can and focus towards that which I want, which is awareness, wisdom, strategy. Okay. Knowledge, all kinds of stuff that, that’s important to me. And I don’t want things, I don’t want things parasitically, robbing energy and, and eating is one of them. Okay, so you just, you, you just, you just focused it more towards exactly what you wanted, which was genius, So yeah, whatever getting away means for somebody else, it could mean whatever it means. But if I try to do anything of consequence, especially if there’s more than one thing to focus on and I try to do it in the norm, it’s really hard. Normal atmosphere that is.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah. Oh, I, I agree. And eating does take up energy. I learn and, and will look. It was day 6, 5, 6 before the real insights. I was having a lovely time, but it took me a few days to decompress and really get there. And it wasn’t until the day before, the last day and the last day that really a lot of just great, great information found me. But even in coaching, I have learned over the last few years, if I wanna show up super clearheaded with great energy for my clients all day, I have to be very intentional with my diet. Like I can’t eat a lot of foods that take a lot of energy to digest. And so I will usually do, raw juice. I do a bowl of like just raw fruits and vegetables and I’ll just noosh on those through the day because they don’t hurt my energy. If I’m gonna have the big meal, I do it in the evening when it’s yeah, whatever. I can be brain dead, but I wanna be really clear, really present. And just the eating it, it definitely changes your energy depending on what food you’re eating.

The Practice of Intentionality: Lean Into the Answers

Will Fuller: No, that’s good because ’cause we’re as much of a steward as we choose to be, and knowledge is the first thing, right? Everything requires energy and we just think about it. I still. Probably. I know, I know. I, I, I will still expend the energy on things that sometimes I’ll go what did you just do that for? And it’s not to, to, to degrade myself anyway. It’s just an awareness like, wait a minute, stop. Let’s go do something else with that. That actually is, it has some value to it.

Jennifer Dawn: yeah, yeah. Another great thing you said was that you actually asked the question like, I love that you listened to that inner guidance that said, Hey, go out 10 years. I love that you listened to that. Because I think a lot of times we can tend to ignore that, that guidance that comes to us. But you listened to it and you looked, you had the courage to actually say, “alright. Let me go out and let me look 10 years into the future,” and I, I just think there’s something really important for those listening to just take that away of just asking the question, “where is this going?” And being, having the courage to really receive that information because I think sometimes it’s easy to shut down and just stay in our day to day where we are and not be asking some of those bigger questions.

Will Fuller: You’re bringing up a really good point, Jennifer, and thank you for bringing up ’cause I didn’t think about that. I’ve had a, a number of people ask me over the years how do you hear that voice? Whatever. And I said, pretty much, I, I believe that pretty much everybody does hear it. And I, and I’ll tell you how someone taught me how to hear it. It wasn’t that it wasn’t, the broadcast wasn’t happening, I wasn’t listening, and it’s as simple as this. Here’s what they told me. They said, “Hey, you know when you’re just doing something right and you’re motor wrong doing your thing, and then there’s this, just this random thought that has nothing to do. Oftentimes with what you’re doing, and it’s just a little something outta the side there and you blow it off because you’re like that’s completely irrelevant to this.” This is the phrase they told me. I will never forget. They said, “it’s not always, but you’ll be surprised how often this works.” This is the word they used. They said, “lean into that.” “Hmm.” “into that, that you just heard.” Just pause for a few seconds, maybe a minute. Don’t let it go. Think about it, you may or may not know something revelatory in the moment, but you will be surprised how often you will because you are actually hearing these things. You just don’t realize they’re meaningful. You think they’re random and meaningless, and oftentimes they’re not. This proactive approach is fundamental to a **long-term business vision**.

Jennifer Dawn: Yeah. So true. Oh, I love that. Lean into it. I’m gonna be remembering that one. Often when I have a big problem to solve, you can sit and you can grind away in it and certain things, yeah, you can figure it out. But the bigger things, the sitting in it. Doesn’t always, often doesn’t work to solve it. And so this is one of the things that I, I coach my clients on too. Have something in your life that resets you, grounds you. For me, it’s my horse. So when I, and now I, I’ve learned how to ride a motorcycle since you saw me last Will. So now I go out and ride motorcycles with my husband. But I have my own bike and so now it’s okay, so I can go out on the bike too, but nothing is better than the horse for me. And when I have that big problem, I very intentionally will step away from the office and I will go to the barn and I know that the drive out the time with my horse and the drive home, somewhere in that time that information is gonna drop in my head. And how it gets there. I don’t know. But it does get there and it, it’s happened enough to me to where now it’s just kind of part of my game plan. It’s just “okay, can’t solve it. Not gonna struggle with it. I’m gonna go see the horse and it works.” And I just think that when you’re at a, when you’re, when you’re in a place where like you’re in the rv, you’re out jogging, you’re in the shower, you’re wherever you’re open to receive it. And it’s easy to just ignore it and be like but I think the more that we can channel that, and like you said, lean into it. There’s so much information there that is at our fingertips. Like we know we, we know a lot more than I think we even give ourselves credit for, but if you can start to lean into it and tap into it, it’s, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant.

Will Fuller: but you said something that one key part there that, that I think is really important. So by the way, I’m so jealous of a horse. I love horses. But okay. But, but it sounded like you said you go out, drive the barn. Spend some time with your horse, drive back, but you go with the expectation that the solution’s going to land on you. Okay? So you’re finding what you’re looking for, which is super important. And I’m not, and again, not faulting somebody who does this. You didn’t go to the barn to see the horse just to escape and not think about anything anymore and think “I just need to get away from this.” “I’m tired of it.” “I just wanna go get my, my, my, my horse, a hug and a kiss.” That would be okay too, There are days like that will, there are plenty of those days. okay. But, but we, I absolutely believe we find what we expect. Okay. And, and that’s huge. Look, we all need a getaway moment. That, that, that, that’s nothing wrong with that, but it just goes goes back to other stuff, right? In terms of. Who do you think you really are? What do you think you deserve? What is it that you want? Don’t even get into why do you want it? Do you think it will ever happen? If it will or if it won’t? Why? Those are the the question ’cause. ’cause you will find what you’re looking for one way or the other.

Jennifer Dawn: You will, I always love to say, we put out, we get back what we put out and we’re always trying to prove ourselves. And so if you’re putting out, even if you don’t always realize what you’re putting out, sometimes we’re putting stuff out, we don’t realize it. But when you, whatever you put out is usually what you get back and we’re always trying to prove ourselves, right? And so it took me years to even figure out that going to the barn. Was such such a way for me to find those answers. And even now if I go out to the barn and the answer doesn’t, doesn’t come to me right now, today, it’s okay. I just put it out there and I know it’s gonna find me, and it just, it finds me on its own time and that’s okay. So it’s like knowing that. It’s, it’s okay to put it out there. It’s okay to trust in something bigger than we are and just have faith that the answer will find you and, and not make ourselves too crazy, that’s the hard part of all right, all right, most of us who are entrepreneurial in nature, there’s a measure of impatience that comes with that. yeah. I know we can all raise our hands of just “ah, why can’t I just happen on my own time and pace?” yeah. Yeah. Okay. I, I, I, I, I resemble that, that thought. Yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I love it. Such a great, great, amazing conversation. Will I would love to ask, I know we’re gonna be out of time here actually, we were out of time, but I had to keep going because we’re having such a great conversation. Is there anything else that you would love to share with our listeners? Just any insight, any wisdom? I respect you so much. You’re such a, a talented, amazing. Human being and a, a very successful businessman. And so is there anything else that you just wanna share with our listeners before we sign off?

Conclusion: What You Do Is Not Who You Are

Will Fuller: If I limited to one thing so I’m gonna go with what? With, with what I hear. Okay. So for every person who will ever see or listen to this. Really, really try to realize that, that every last one of you are priceless. That if you did nothing throughout the course of your life, you still are priceless. You still are, are, are beyond measure and value. So what does that say? ’cause nobody ever does nothing but the course of a life. So means that. Whatever you do throughout the course of that life has nothing to do with your value. You are already priceless. So I would encourage all of us and then remind myself ever visually that what I do is not who I am. So when I screw up, and by the way, I have done that maybe once or twice in my life, I am still priceless. Okay. So if you can cut the tether between who you do and what you are, your life will be changed forever. It’s not because what you do doesn’t matter. It’s that when you know who you are, no matter what you do, never ever changes one iota. It changes how you engage what you do. And I had to learn that the hard way. There’s a longer story that I didn’t learn that till I was in my late forties, but I learned, but it took me three years, three years of walking through the de metaphorical Desert to learn that. And you don’t have to learn it that way. This kind of self-awareness is key to a sustainable **long-term business vision**.

Jennifer Dawn: Mm-hmm. No, so beautiful. Will, thank you so much for sharing that. I appreciate it. Really quickly, can you just tell everybody where they can find you if they wanna learn more about you?

Will Fuller: Sure. Yeah, so I’ll give you an email address ’cause that’s the simplest way. Alright. My, my, my address is W Fuller. That’s W-F-U-L-L-E-R at Acacia. That’s spelled A-C-A-C-I-A. Then the word originals with an s.com and yeah, I wish everybody only the best of the best ’cause that’s what you deserve.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh, beautiful. And we will put that everybody into the show notes for today as well. So if you wanna reach out to Will find out a little bit bit about him and Acacia Originals. That would be awesome. Will thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate it so much.

Will Fuller: No. High five, just virtual hug. All right, because I would, would, would love to do that one day.

Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love that so much. All right guys. That’s it for today’s show. I told you lots and lots of great, great stuff in here, super gold. You might even need to go back and listen to it again. I hope you take something from today’s show. It’s one thing to listen, and then thank you so much for listening, but it’s a whole nother thing to take something that you’ve learned and heard here today and actually apply it to your life and to your business. So I really encourage you to do that. That’s it for today. Thank you Will. Get out there you guys today and have a great day and have a happy, productive day.

Will Fuller: thank you. Good to see You Jennifer.

Jennifer Dawn: Thank you.

Connect with Will:

• Email: wfuller@acaciaoriginals.com

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