Episode 4: Ryan Sheley: Founder of Principal of Cottonwood Concepts

Ryan Sheley has the singular perspective of someone who grew up in Knoxville, travelled widely and chose to come back home.  A West High School grad who spent time at the University of Tennessee, Ryan spent nearly a decade touring almost 300 days a year as frontman of the band Homemade Wine, including a stop at Bonnaroo and a long residency in Key West, before coming home to help rebuild downtown Knoxville.

In this conversation with host Rob Howard, Ryan traces the path from that stage life into helping develop and grow Maple Hall, the bowling alley and entertainment anchor that turned a roofless, derelict J.C. Penney building on Gay Street into one of downtown's most-loved spaces, and the relaunch of Babalu next door. Now the founder of Cottonwood Concepts, Ryan talks about what it actually takes to build something that lasts, whether that's a marriage, a business culture, or some of the city's hundred-year-old buildings that others would have demolished.

Along the way: how his father brought Wendy's to East Tennessee in the early '70s, buying and turning around an auto repair shop that went on to win a Carfax Top Shop award, the "one thing doctrine" for hiring and retaining the right employees, the Charley Crockett lyric that gave Cottonwood Concepts its name, and how his team is bringing new energy to Tellico Plains and the Cherohala Skyway corridor with Red Chimney Pizza. Expect detours into Hemingway, Simon Sinek, and hanging out in a Key West bar with a NASCAR legend.