Who This Podcast Is For

Most professionals are good at their job but don’t fully understand how their work connects to company performance.

That gap leads to misalignment, missed opportunities, and slower growth.  

In this short introduction, Stephen H Covey explains what this podcast is about, who it’s for, and what you can expect.

This podcast is built for:

• Leaders who want better alignment and decision-making
• Sales professionals who need to understand their customers’ business
• Teams that want to connect their work to real business outcomes

You’ll hear:

• Conversations with Acumen Learning leaders
• Interviews with executives from leading organizations
• Industry breakdowns and real-world examples
• A simple framework built around the five business drivers: cash, profit, assets, growth, and people  

If you want to understand how business really works and gain an edge in your career, this podcast is for you.

To learn more visit: acumenlearning.com or check out our books Seeing The Big Picture & Business Acumen for Sales Success 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Acumen Learning Podcast. My name is Stephen Covey, and I'm one of the hosts of this podcast. I wanted to take a few minutes to explain what this podcast is, who it's for, and why we're doing it. Acumen Learning is a training company that's been around since 2002. We worked with organizations around the world, including 34 of the Fortune 50, helping people understand how their business actually works and how to make better decisions inside it. At the core of everything we do is a simple idea. Most people are good at their job, but they don't always understand how their work connects to how the business makes money. And when that connection is missing, you see it everywhere. Teams working hard but not aligned. Decisions made in silos. Leaders frustrated because people aren't thinking like owners. That's the gap this podcast is built to address. This podcast is for anyone who wants to improve their business acumen. If you're in sales, this will especially be relevant. A big part of selling today is understanding your customer's business, not just your product. But this isn't just for sales. If you're in leadership, operations, finance, HR, marketing, or really any role inside a company, this will help you see the bigger picture and make better decisions. And you do not need a finance background to get value from this podcast. A big part of what we do at Acumen Learning is take concepts that can feel complex, especially financial concepts, and make them simple and practical. Business acumen is not just financial acumen, it's understanding how the business works, how decisions get made, and how everything connects. That's how we'll approach this podcast. Simple, practical, relevant. In these episodes, we'll break down how businesses actually operate. You'll hear conversations with leaders from Acumen Learning, including Kevin Cope, our founder, and Ben Cook, our president. We'll also interview leaders from companies we've worked with to get real-world perspective on how this shows up inside organizations. We'll go deep into specific industries, what pressures they face, and what actually drives performance. And we'll look at all of it through a simple framework we use called the five business drivers cash, profit, assets, growth, and people. When you understand how those drivers work together, you start to see business differently. You understand why leaders make the decisions they make. You connect your role to the bigger picture. And you operate at a higher level. That's the goal of this podcast. No jargon, no theory, just a clear way to understand how business works and how to apply it. If that's what you're looking for, you're in the right place. Thanks for listening. You can go ahead and start with our first episode with Stephen M. R. Covey and Kevin Cope, where they break down the gap they saw and what led them to build and found Acumen Learning.