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Nashville Entrepreneur Center sells the introduction you can’t get yourself
Inside an old trolley barn, a Nashville nonprofit makes business relationships available by the month. Its real product is access - and its own history shows what that access costs.
EPIC's Odd Advantage: The Handshake Before the Megaphone
Most agencies sell a specialty. EPIC sells coordination - the unfashionable work of getting message, media, donors, developers and deadlines to behave like one team.
Nashville SC built a $335 million home. Then came the silverware.
A stadium, a guitar riff and a first trophy: Nashville Soccer Club has turned a local soccer following into an MLS business. The expensive part was building a home; the harder part was giving people reasons to return.
The Grocer Who Bet His Life Savings on a Building Older Than the Supermarket
John Dyke grew up raising tobacco and heirloom tomatoes, then poured his life savings into a natural grocery in a building that predated the modern supermarket. Twenty-five years later, The Turnip Truck is four stores, one juice bar, and a running argument for shopping like your neighbors are farmers - because his are.
The 130-Year-Old Foundry That Turned a Skillet Into a System
Lodge does not merely sell heavy pans. From two Tennessee foundries, it has built a loop of manufacturing, education, mass retail, collecting, and care that keeps a 19th-century material useful in a nonstick age.
Eco-Energy LLC
Eco-Energy built its reach by solving the unglamorous parts of renewable fuel - price risk, railcars, tanks and missed deliveries. Now that physical network is becoming a platform for solar projects, emissions certificates and a wider low-carbon trade.