Amanda Oaks | Walk Your Plans Nashville
Founder of Walk Your Plans Nashville
Amanda Oaks is the founder of Walk Your Plans Nashville. In this video, she shares how she turned market insight and her own experience as a consumer into a completely new service for a fast-growing city.
At the Start
Amanda didn’t come from a traditional construction background—but she saw a gap in the market and had the clarity to do something about it. As a consumer herself, she recognized the stress and uncertainty that can come with building something from the ground up. So she combined that firsthand insight with sharp market awareness to create a solution Nashville hadn’t seen before: full-scale walkthroughs of construction plans before a project begins.
Turning Point
The idea was new to the city—but Amanda knew growth wouldn't come from the service alone. It would come from educating the market. Rather than wait for customers to catch on, she leaned in early, focusing on brand clarity, awareness, and real-world application. Along the way, she learned some hard lessons—most notably, that doing everything yourself will burn you out fast. What sustained her? Mental toughness, relentless discipline, and the self-awareness to identify her own blind spots and keep pushing forward.
Impact & Legacy
Walk Your Plans Nashville is helping homeowners, designers, and developers alike see—and walk through—their vision before construction even begins. Amanda is raising the standard for how building decisions get made in one of the country’s fastest-growing cities. And she’s showing other entrepreneurs that clarity isn’t just a product—it’s a mindset that leads to better outcomes, better businesses, and stronger foundations from day one.
“ If you’re not setting yourself up for success from the very beginning with the right systems, processes, projections, understanding of the market and what you’re bringing, then you’re starting with a very shaky foundation. ”
-
Hi, I am Amanda from Walk Your Plans Nashville. We are a facility where we project in full scale construction plans for all types of projects, whether that's a residential build, a residential development. Whether you're an architect, a homeowner, a commercial developer, um, a private designer that's helping a homeowner or a commercial client, we can have all of those plans come in in full scale to be walkthrough and see all of the changes prior to going to construction. Some of my early successes as an entrepreneur were definitely utilizing market knowledge to really understand what the market needed, and also coming in that as a consumer viewpoint as well, how I'm thinking about growth for Walk Your Plans Nashville right now at this moment is really with market education. We've brought a brand new service. That did not exist in Nashville to a state where development is booming on both the residential and the commercial side. So growth for me right now is awareness, brand clarity and utilization in these early stages.
Some of the hardest lessons I've learned as an entrepreneur have been trying to do everything myself. The mental toughness required to be an entrepreneur is such a big, big, big topic. You have to have rigor. And disciplined and an endless supply of energy and understanding about what your own fatal flaws are, how to solve for those things, and constantly be willing to go back and try again.
The advice that I would give an aspiring entrepreneur would be reach out to people that are doing it data collect, but don't validate your own objectives based on their advice as if it is the gold standard. Take all of that advice, put it together in your own business plan, understand what you've got, and then take it and layer on your own initiative and just start to make it happen.
If you're not setting yourself up with for success from the very beginning with the right systems, processes, projections, understanding of the market and what you're bringing, then you're starting with a very shaky foundation. It's not something that you do where you become an entrepreneur and think, I'm gonna nine to five it, you are 24/7, 365 for everyone and everything. To find us at Walk Your Plans Nashville. Visit our website at Walk Your Plans nashville.com or find us on Instagram at Walk Your Plans Nashville. We've got a tremendous amount of content there where you can better understand what we do every day to help homeowners and developers see their plans in full scale.
Why We Share These Stories
We believe that celebrating Tennessee’s entrepreneurs will inspire the next generation of bold thinkers, risk-takers, and community builders. Entrepreneurs don’t forget where they come from—and they carry the power to transform not just their businesses, but entire neighborhoods, towns, and local economies. See more entrepreneur stories from the Patton Foundation.
