Meet Rashad Russell | Web Designer & App Developer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rashad Russell and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rashad, other than deciding to work for yourself, what else do you think played a pivotal role in your story?
Making the right personal finance choices before jumping into entrepreneurship, networking with entrepreneurs who had skillsets outside of my own, and investing in my business education were the three best things I’ve done in business.

I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was a 14 year-old teenager in high school. Every major life decision I’ve made since then have all been for the sake of succeeding as an entrepreneur.

I learned personal finance in high school, and knew not to get in a ton of debt via college student loans without a plan to pay it off in under five years. I won scholarships and purposefully chose a major (Computer Science) that I researched would pay well upon graduation.

Because of that, I was able to pay off all of my student loans within 18 months of graduating college, build up a savings, quit my job, and have been able to pursue my dream of being an entrepreneur ever since.

Entrepreneurship is hard and I soon realized after quitting my job that I had more to learn. Since I was a software engineer wanting to start a tech company, I assume it would be a little easier because I knew how to code and could build a tech product without paying someone else a ton of money to do it for me. That assumption is a mistake a lot of engineers make who want to become an entrepreneur. Being a software engineer and growing a software company are two completely different skillsets.



I still needed to learn other aspects of business, most notably sales, marketing, and product development. Thanks to networking and building friendships with non-engineering entrepreneurs who had a background in business, I was able to close the gap. They’ve given me some great advice, and were able to answer any questions when I was stuck.

Thanks to the entrepreneurs who helped advise me, I realized the business skills I was missing and investing in books, seminars, webinars, and learning programs to close my knowledge gap. I spent over $3000 on business learning material.

In the early stages of entrepreneurship, I think it is vitally important to invest in your education; otherwise, it could take twice as long to find success.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My business is Beyond Light Creations, a web design and app development agency. Along with that, I launched an app of my own called AcmeBuilder which is a website building platform. My goal right now is to grow AcmeBuilder into being the easiest and fastest way to setup a website.

I spent an entire year, all of 2023, building this platform from scratch and just announced it in 2024. As a web designer, I’ve use all of the popular website building tools on the market and noticed the pros and cons of each. I’ve noticed that non web designers find a lot of these platforms to be confusing and likewise, I’ve noticed a lot of professional web designers find the other popular platforms to be fairly limiting.

My goal is to bridge the gap, and make setting up a website as easy as setting a social media page. Likewise, for professional web designers, I want to give them full creative range to design any website they’d like while making it easy to manage with their clients.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take friends who are new to Nashville to all the spots that make this city unique. Food-wise, I would take them get traditional southern food, but first we have to get Nashville hot chicken, as that’s unique to Nashville. Then, I would take them to a meat-and-three restaurant. My favorite is Big Al’s Deli in Salemtown. Last, I would take them to Monell’s in Germantown.

For events, we would go visit Broadway, the Country Music Hall of Fame, National Museum of African American Music, and a Titan’s game if my friends are visiting during football season.

Most of my friends who don’t live in Nashville live out-of-state, so I would travel outside of Nashville for other activities like hiking, site-seeing, and take a road trip to Chattanooga, Pigeon Forge, or Memphis.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
First and foremost I want to shoutout my family: my mom, dad, brother, and grandparents. They’ve always believed in me, encouraged me since I was a child. I always felt like I could succeed at anything I set my mind to thanks to my familial support system.

Then, I want to thank my high school teachers. It was in high school that I first decided I want to be an entrepreneur. My high school offered several business-related classes, and I took most of them. I joined both business clubs my school had to offer: DECA and FBLA. I competed in business plan competitions, participated in trade shows, and traveled the country to attend conferences thanks to these programs. These experiences put a battery in my back that I was on the right path, and I am still running off that energy today.

All the people I’ve met until now have all contributed in some way to my growth. Entrepreneurship is a hard, stressful, and sometimes lonely journey, so surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals is what keeps you going. Always seeks groups and resources that will help you keep pushing.

I would say entrepreneurship is a 5 – 10 year commitment on average before you start seeing significant success, and it’s worth it. It’s even more awesome once you start seeing the friends you meet along the way start to become successful, and that encourages you to keep pushing.

Website: https://beyondlightcreations.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/iamrashadrussell/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashadrussell/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/iamrashadrussell/

Other: https://acmebuilder.xyz/

Image Credits
Rashad Russell – Web Designer at Beyond Light Creations