The Business Acumen Gap That Led to Acumen Learning with Stephen M.R. Covey & Kevin Cope

Why do so many capable teams struggle to make good business decisions?

In this episode, Stephen M.R. Covey and Kevin Cope share the story behind the founding of Acumen Learning and the problem they couldn’t ignore.

Even inside a highly successful organization, they saw a disconnect. People were talented and motivated, but they didn’t fully understand how the business made money. That gap created misalignment, poor decisions, and real financial strain.

What followed was a shift in thinking that changed everything.

In this conversation, they break down:

• The early challenges inside the Covey Leadership organization
• Why “no margin, no mission” became a turning point
• How improving business acumen helped turn the business around
• The realization that this gap exists in nearly every company
• What it actually took to build Acumen Learning from the ground up

This episode sets the foundation for the rest of the podcast. If you want to understand why business acumen matters and where it all started, this is the place to begin.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Today I'm grateful to be joined by Stephen M. R. Covey, who I should mention is my dad, and Kevin Cope, who I also should mention is my CEO. We're pulling back the curtain today on the story behind the founding of Acumen Learning. But more than just a founding story, I'm also hopeful that this episode can highlight one of the bigger gaps in the marketplace today and what to do about it. So I thought we'd start and let's go way back even before Acumen Learning existed, back to the Covey leadership days. And this was around the time that the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was released. So we're talking late 80s, early 90s. So, Dad, and I'm not going to call you Steven, I'm going to call you Dad because it's just too weird to call you Steven. So at the time, you were the CEO and you were at the time working closely with Kevin. And my understanding is that you saw a gap within the Covey leadership organization around business acumen. So I'm wondering if you could take us back to that time and maybe reflect on what you saw and what you did about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

What was happening at the time was Seven Habits had come out and was doing great and people were loving it. And we found that our mission was so big, and uh where we were at as a company in terms of financial strength and and you know economic might was just not at all on par with where our mission was. And and uh and we were doing all kinds of things that were that were great things to do, but a lot of them we couldn't make money at, and they took a lot of resources to do, and so it started to kind of put a strain on us financially. We'd had 11 straight years of negative cash flow and and a lot of debt. So if you do the math on that, we were gonna, you know, high growth, low margins, no outside capital, we're gonna run out of cash at some point. And and um and we were so mission-driven that we were not focused enough on running ourselves like a business. So when I got in as CEO, that was one of the first things I saw that we needed to do is we needed to run ourselves like a business. We needed more business awareness, business acumen, really, um, at every level with our executive team and uh with our salespeople, to run ourselves like a business, and that we could actually do better in the long run with our mission if we became a good business too. So we tried not to present it as either or, you know, kind of are we are we a mission? Are we a business? We tried to say, no, we're a third alternative company. We're a business with a mission, we're a business that matters, a business that makes a difference. But we have to see ourselves like a business. You know, Kevin and I, in talking about this, because Kevin was running all the sales and delivery organization, and I was the CEO, um, we we recognized the need that we needed to run ourselves like a business. We needed to learn and apply business thinking, business principles. We needed business acumen. So we created our own version of it, and we went out and and uh we got this book called uh Finance and Accounting for the Non-Fanancial Professional or something like that. And I asked everyone on the executive team to read the book. And then our extended leadership team, we got to read this book, we got to learn how to think like a business and understand business. And then at some point we even took it to the salespeople. And and the whole idea was that we could do better with our mission if we ran ourselves like a business and you know, a mission-driven business. And and uh and we adopted the mantra that there's no margin, there's no mission. And so we learned this idea and we did our very best to kind of learn business acumen as a company. And actually, it really did help us because we turned ourselves around financially. And we we figured out a good business model, and with that in place, suddenly we could do everything better. And now we had choices and options that we really didn't have before. And we didn't run out of cash. We actually grew and we and we gained enormous financial strength when we began to see ourselves like a business and run it like a business. But we needed that kind of thinking, that mindset, and the skills to get us there. And that was kind of our first foray into the idea of saying, wow, business acumen is a game changer. And it was for us. Kevin, did I get it right? Is that where you were talking?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, no, you got it right, Stephen. Yeah, it was it was really a bit of a defining moment, you know, for the organization. Matter of fact, you're Stephen, your father and Stephen H. your grandfather, Stephen Arkova, used to say uh kind of that idea too, no margin, no mission. And I really admire companies that get both right. Kind of an elevated sense of mission as well as an elevated sense of the importance of margin. Um, because if you've got margin in place, you really can, as you just said, Stephen, you really can enhance um fuel and important mission, which we were able to more fully do as an organization.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah, so no margin, no mission. It became kind of our mantra. And and it became it was hard because I had a lot of the mission-driven people that loved who we were and what we're about, put pressure on me of wait a minute, why are we why are we slowing down in this initiative? This really works in communities, and it did, but there was no one to pay for it. And and we tried to, we had to figure this out, and we really had to adopt that mantra. If there's no margin, there's no mission. And we had to think like a business, but we didn't want to be an ordinary business, we wanted to be extraordinary. So I like how Kevin says it was, you know, it was super ordinate. It was not just to be an ordinary business. No, it was to be an extraordinary business. Business acumen really changed our ability to perform and and and therefore to carry forward the mission.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Kevin um wanted to ask you, was there any internal resistance you know to this initiative when my dad rolled it out? Like how did how did the team respond to being taught fundamentals of you know, financial fundamentals? What was what was kind of the reaction internally? I'd love to hear your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

I think Steven created a pretty good sense of the burning platform that existed, meaning that you know, for us to continue as an organization, we had to pay attention to this. So I think for the most part, there wasn't a lot of resistance. I I think there were a couple of pockets where people kind of thought, oh, profit. You know, and um if you go back to the global financial crisis in 2007, eight, and nine, where you had some bad actors, profit became kind of a bad word. But um I think uh in the covey organization, um, most people uh saw the need for it and and stepped in. And it reminds me of this quote from Albert Chu. He was the former president of Freeman, who said, and I'll paraphrase this. He said something to the effect of um profit is one of the most noble things the company can do because profit is what enables you to reinvest back into your employees and your customers for their benefit. And so I think we sort of uh saw the um the importance and also the enabling um attribute that profit could bring into the organization. So I think for the most part, uh people could see the need and uh also see the the real mission-oriented reason why we needed to focus on profit.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

But I remember there, I mean, there was some resistance.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

You would have gotten it more than me. I was I was just heading up the sales and delivery organization while you you know fundamentally were CEO. So yeah, you would have gotten more pushback than I.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

And the the pushback was not so much why we adding this margin element to it, this business element, but more why can't we still move forward with doing this initiative or this you know product for this you know group of people? And and I'll use communities as an example. We had this community initiative, it was a great initiative, but we couldn't make money at it. There was no one to pay for it. I had some pushback saying, does your dad know that you're clamping down on all these things? And and I said, Well, he does, and he's supportive because the goal is not that we're trying to get rid of these mission-driven initiatives, but rather that if we can run ourselves like a business, we can do more mission-driven initiatives.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

It's it's interesting to hear kind of uh background story about something like the Seven Habits, where you know today it it's a huge brand has sold all of these copies, but that it would not have had the same success or impact without pairing it with this business acumen training internally. So, Kevin, was there a moment uh where you realized, hey, we're doing something here at at Covey um that other companies need? So maybe not just internally here at Covey, but you know, what when was the moment where you said, hey, there's something here potentially for other businesses?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yeah, you know, uh probably excuse me, that came for me uh after I'd left the Covey organization. And quite frankly, that didn't come for me. I I knew it was powerful, you know, the idea of business and financial acumen. At the time, it was important for us at Covey to act that way. Uh, but to add a door curriculum there uh didn't come uh to my mind until uh the fall of 2002, when we started talking about what organization did we want to form. And it was actually um, as Steve and I were talking um and uh reflecting on um what we did at the Covey organization. I'm gonna give more credit, a lot more credit to Stephen, what he was doing at the Covey organization, that boy, if that was important to us, uh wouldn't that uh be a broader need in the marketplace as well? And so it came more about us as we were reflecting on other ways to contribute uh, you know, out in the marketplace and remembering uh that that was something that was important to us in the in the early Covey organization.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

Yeah, because we saw how it literally kind of turned us around financially. You know, seven habits could reach more people, not less, because of we got financially strong and we and we figured out a business model. And and it was upon that kind of later reflection, as Kev and I were thinking about, because we wanted to do something together, and and we brainstormed and we said, you know what, what about this this financial approach, this business acumen approach that we applied here at Covey that really changed everything? Isn't that itself something that could be of value to people?

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So after your time at Covey for both of you, you came together and said, hey, let's let's do this, let's let's let's launch Acumen Learning. Kevin, I'm I'm curious. Um did you have the impression, say, okay, let's let's do this. We know that this is a need at like more startup, smaller companies that need this, but what was your assumption around like Fortune 100 companies? Did you have the impression initially of, oh yeah, this could be helpful for a smaller company like Cubby Leadership was back in the day, but probably not for Fortune 100. I'm curious what your mindset was around that and then and then and then what you began to see as you started, you know, opening this in the market.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah, good question. My assumption was this that it would be really good for a frontline individual or a frontline supervisor, because I sort of assumed everybody else had it. But as we started taking this content out, we quickly learned that you can go fairly senior in an organization today, even the Fortune 100. And the business acumen gap is a whole lot bigger than I would have ever assumed, and I think most people would believe. And I think the reason for that is uh as companies grow, uh, people and employees start uh specialize in the organization. So you get focused, uh, people focused on, you know, operations or sales or um, you know, marketing. Um, and they sort of lose that big picture sense. And so literally, people become very expert in their function that sort of miss the big picture of how their company makes money. And so uh we continue to learn, you know, even today that that gap is a lot bigger. I I'm talking about even VP, senior VP, even executive level, you'll find individuals where that gap is a lot bigger than you would uh have ever guessed. And by the way, um, what's interesting about those more senior folks is uh they have a sense that they don't see that big picture and they sort of try and fly under the radar. So, you know, you're not gonna find a senior executive say, hey, bring it in. I need that. It'll be something more like, hey, bring it into our organization, our rank and file need it. Um then, of course, you know, they're in the back of the room nodding and taking notes and listening. And uh and quite often we'll do uh classes for these more senior folks and executive folks. And so again, it it's really surprising how big that gap is. But as I look at it, it's very understandable. You know, people are smart, and again, they're expert in the field that they know, but they get so immersed in that um they don't often have the chance to step back and really see it in perspective of how the overall company makes money and their contribution to that. And of course, that creates challenges when you have individuals, especially senior line leaders, making decisions that might be good for their function, but not necessarily good for the over, excuse me, the overall organization.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

That makes it makes sense. Um, so Kevin, one one thing I wanted to ask you about is is the early days of acumen learning, you know, kind of the kind of the startup grind period of this. What was it like for you to go from being on an executive team at Covey to then doing day in, day out cold calls? I mean, one thing I'll say for people listening is Kevin's a fantastic leader and and CEO at our company because he's willing to do quote unquote the grunt work, if you will. And uh and I just would like to hear what those early days of acumen learning were like from your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, I went from running a pretty good-sized organization uh to being in a room by myself cold college, you know, eight, 10, 12 hours a day. And I'll tell you, it was one of the hardest periods in my career, in my professional career. One of the darkest times um hit my ego head on. And so in actuality, it was one of the toughest times for me professionally, but maybe one of the best times for me personally. Um, I, you know, as I mentioned, uh, my ego took a big hit. That that was good for me, you know, back then. Um I became humble, uh much more humble. And I also really developed a much greater appreciation for kind of the basic necessities of life. I found myself appreciating running water and a home with heat and a comfortable place to, you know, uh for my family to be in. And so um it was good. Uh, you know, the startup, if anybody started up a company, uh I've got great admiration and empathy for empathy for those individuals. I mean, you think about starting, you, you know, you've got to get websites, you've got to get licenses, um, you know, you've got to uh create an organization, you've got to develop processes. And while it looks glamorous on the outside, it is tough work. Uh, you know, less than half of companies survive uh four or five years. Uh that's better than most people think, but still the odds are against you. And after that, many companies go out of business. So it really is sort of a tough slog. And uh one that in hindsight, I greatly appreciate. Um, and uh really appreciate the the lessons that I uh learned during that time. And uh, you know, I I can look back fondly now on that and say, oh, you know, wasn't those were tough times, but they were good times. But in the moment, boy, sometimes that could that could feel pretty rough. I've got to uh credit my wife Karen, who at one point in time I was like, boy, you know, I'm not sure. And she goes, you know what, you've got this. You've got this. And so she was a great cheerleader. Um, the paychecks were a whole lot different than what I was used to. Um, but she was willing to hunker down with me, uh, had great faith in me, um, never complained about our more meager circumstances, but was always uh a great uh supporter and cheerleader for me.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

So if there ever was um an illustration of you know what Angela Duckworth wrote about in her book, Grit, it was Kevin, you know, passion and perseverance. So Kevin really was the one that that we birthed it together, but Kevin is the one that actually went through the the labor and and did the hard, hard work. And it was really, really quite remarkable.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Uh less kind of you to say you were there at very important points, but uh obviously you you had important work to do as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So um so Kevin, one more question around the early days of acumen learning. What why uh and maybe for both of you actually, what why why pick the name Acumen Learning? What did you want that to signal?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah, so um the acumen part's probably a little more obvious. You know, the content, the centerpiece for content was really kind of business and financial acumen. And we define acumen today as um understanding how your company makes money and making good decisions around the money-making process. And so uh that acumen in the name was important for us. And then the second part um had a little more discussion because a lot of organizations were, you know, um, you know, communications, learning and development or training development company. But um to say training um would be more of what we do and wouldn't reflect it from the learner's perspective. So we were going to do training, but the real focus was on helping individuals, employees, and organizations actually learn and know how to apply the content. So that's why we kind of opted for that second part, not to you know, to define us as a training development company, which we were, but to have our name reflect it from the participants' point of view. We and that's from the learner uh as perspectives. That's why we kind of landed on acumen learning.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Yeah, and what I what I would add to it is at the time at Covey, the best we had out there was just kind of these books, Finance and Accounting for the Non-Fanancial Manager. But that really was not the main purpose to learn finance. The real purpose here was to try to understand how the company made money, how, how, how we were how we made profit, you know, how it worked. Because then you can know how I can add value to that process.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

By the way, if you like what we've been talking about, you'll love our book, Business Acumen for Sell Success. It's the ultimate guide to more strategic deals and starting to think like a business partner. It's gonna change the way you sell.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Um, I'd like to maybe shift gears just a little bit here and talk a little bit about why business acumen builds both trust and engagement on kind of the employee side. So, so dad, you've taught literally millions of people about trust, and that trust is built on both character and competence. Can you unpack where maybe business acumen fits into that model of trust again in a business setting?

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Absolutely, yeah. So trust is both character and competence, those two halves. And when most people think of trust, they're thinking character. And that is the starting point. But someone could have a high character, be a person of integrity, have you know good intent, they're they're seeking mutual benefit, win-win, they care, and that's vital. But if they're not current, they're not relevant, they're not able to perform to deliver, then I might trust them to watch my apartment or my home if I went on a vacation, right? Because they're honest. But I might not trust them on the key project, the key client, the key deliverable. It has to be done well and on time if they don't have a track record of performing, or if they're not capable of performing because they're not relevant or current with the skills, the competencies that are needed. So I need that competence half just as much as I need the character half. And the and the business acumen kind of represents that competence because I put the competence into two halves of competence. There's your capabilities and your results. And so capabilities is referring to your talents, your expertise, your knowledge, having business acumen, understanding how the company makes money, understand and understanding how I can impact that. If I can have those capabilities, I will be more trusted. I'll be a more trusted partner, I'll be a more trusted salesperson, a more trusted executive, because I understand and I have the capability of knowing how. All of this works, how how we make money, how we can grow, how we can add more value and have more impact because of those capabilities. And that's where the business acumen is so helpful because it makes all of us more relevant in a world in which it's very important that we can deliver and we can do what we say that we're going to do. And so that's where it fits in beautifully. It's the competence half of the character competence construct.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Yeah, and Stephen, maybe I can jump in on the engagement side of that. Um, you know, uh Gallup every year does a uh, you know, a study of engagement around the world, employee engagement around the world. And I think they put um the cost of lack of engagement in 2024 at $9 trillion globally and about $2 trillion in the United States. And I think those that were um engaged is at about 32%. And that number's not been improving over the last you know little while. And so engagement continues to be a big challenge for organizations. And so here's what we find. Um, and I love this idea that people work hard for a paycheck, harder for a person, and hardest free purpose. In other words, when people are really clear on how they matter, how they make a difference in an organization, how they fit in, they're gonna be much more engaged. And so when people get really clear on how the company makes money and understand how they align to that, how they can be a part of that, how they can make a difference in the organization, they're gonna be much more engaged. Um, you know, you often hear the term, um, you know, I want a seat at the table. Well, you know what they're talking about at the table is how the company is performing, you know, how we're doing against our goals and how can we improve that? And so people with business acumen who have an understanding of not only their function, but also the big picture of how the company makes money, they're more likely to make the right decisions. They're more likely to align their decisions and their action and their teams to what the company needs. And so um that increases engagement for employees and also creates much better business results for organizations. So I see this content having a big impact and influence on the engagement of employees and organizations. And, you know, especially since COVID and uh it was, you know, post-COVID, uh shortly thereafter, is uh termed the great resignation because employees, um, you know, either wanting to work differently or at home, uh, recognized and and really insisted in this, you know, kind of younger generation of the workforce really wants to do work that's meaningful and uh work that matters to them. And so again, creating that alignment between an individual and how they align to what the company needs is an important aspect of creating employee engagement.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

I agree. I agree completely. And we even saw that a little bit going back to the Covey days, that that this was really helpful when we trained our salespeople. They felt they understood how it all worked, and they knew that we as a company, we had to kind of get strong financially, and they felt a sense of purpose. And that engaged them even more. They already were engaged because of the content, but they became more engaged when they felt like they could have an impact on what needed to happen. So you you're right on, Kevin. It's it's it's suddenly if I can see how I how I contribute to this, how I link to it, how I can have an impact on it, and suddenly I have got a greater purpose. And that engages people like maybe nothing else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Matter of fact, Stephen, if you think about it, trust um can also exist in organizations that have character and competence. You know, you think of shareholders or owners or um, you know, stakeholders to an organization, if they can count on not only the integrity of the company, but its ability to perform, that also builds trust. And I think about it even with our clients. You know, if we ourselves can't run a viable organization, I think, you know, we lose credibility. Um, I think companies want to be tutored and taught and engaged with suppliers and organizations who actually uh practice what they teach. They run a great organization, they create a cut and a great company. A great organization, meaning they treat their people well, they engage them, they have a strong culture, and also companies that grow profitably and sustainably, which is what many companies, you know, most CEOs, if you were to ask them what's your ultimate goal, it's to grow profitably and sustainably, you know, over time. And so again, uh building trust not only with individuals, but also trust in organizations that are a good business and also a great organization.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

And trust in the marketplace with your customers and partners, your stakeholders, including investors or shareholders, because you'll do what you say you're going to do. Yeah. And suddenly the trust is both internal and external. It's inside out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

So, Kevin, you've worked with companies that were going through tough transitions like uh new leadership layoffs or major pivots. Can you share a story where business acumen helped either restore trust or rebuild alignment with those teams?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Yeah. So this would have been, excuse me, a few years back. We were working with a major manufacturer. And it's a manufacturer, you know, billions of dollars in annual revenues. And uh they had uh a union labor force. And every few years they'd have to renegotiate uh, you know, a new contract, a new labor contract. And for this organization, um, that was a real painful process. Uh high distrust between management and labor, hard to get them on the same page, um, each fighting for their respective, you know, interests. And so they were coming up on um this next uh negotiation with a little bit of trepidation. And the CEO uh asked me if I would take the company's uh lead negotiators, negotiators, and also the labor uh union top negotiators, get them in the room together and talk about business acumen and in particular how this company was performing so that they all get on the same page. And so I had a couple of days uh with this team together. And so we first, you know, I built the principles and ideas of business acumen, and then we really applied that to the company's performance. And this was an organization that had been growing nicely, um, but their margins were quite thin. And Wall Street was worried about that, uh, you know, and uh the executive team uh was worried about that as well. So as I went through there, you could see the lights going on from sort of both sides, especially the union side, where they got a real sense of how their company was being viewed by shareholders and uh by the executive team. And as we kind of dug into that, they had a lot of questions. Well, well, tell me about this. How does that stack up with other companies? What have we tried to do to improve that? How's that worked out? And so we had a really robust discussion where um both sides were able to dive into the numbers and performance together to get a real baseline of where the company was. Um, after that, they ended up uh kind of creating a landmark uh, you know, uh labor contract going forward. It was one that was much longer than it ever done in the past, and one they considered the needs of both sides. And so I think that was a real turning point for this organization where both sides, both the union side and the management side of the organization, were able to come together, see the problem and the concerns is out there, not each other. And with that focus, um, they came up with a much better agreement and achieved much better results going forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Um another question I have uh have either of you seen cases or a case where business acumen helped you know an entire team rally around a new strategy or a new direction for a company?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yeah. Um so I was working with another uh organization, and it was much like the early Covey uh Center uh days, where here's a company with a powerful mission, and they were very overt about their focus on mission. Um, and uh very uh throughout the organization, it was in the company's DNA to recognize the good that they were doing in the world, to be excited about the good they were doing in the world. Uh but um they saw profit many in this organization. Stephen, you recall, you know, more resistance to Covey uh in the Covey early days against kind of this idea of a focus on profit or margin. But this organization, their whole culture had such a strong DNA focus on mission that um profit was a dirty word in that organization. And a lot of folks would kind of push it aside. Look, that's not what I'm about. I'm not here for, you know, to generate a profit. I'm here to build a world-class organization that makes a difference in the world. And so I'm not really inner, that's not my job. I'll leave that up to the you know, finance folks. Well, because of that, you know, if you don't have a whole organization aligned uh around the importance of running a good business, um, they were struggling. Um, their margins were extremely thin. And so their executive team asked uh me to come in and help create a sense of the importance of profit, of generating a margin. They felt like um since they had been kind of, you know, beating that drum, the CEO and the CFO, that they felt like maybe that nobody was listening to them and they were sort of being uh kind of viewed and stereotyped as look, you're just business people, we're mission-oriented people. And so I came in, you know, I'm a I'm an outside party. Um, I didn't come in with a bias, but I was able to really emphasize the importance of how margin, and Stephen, you hit this really well, how margin enables a greater focus on mission. It really allows for more impact in the world. And so I found people that, you know, were kind of avowed nonprofitists really saw it as something that was not in their wheelhouse, becoming um more enamored with the idea that if they really were mission-oriented, if they truly were about the mission, the only way to accomplish that long-term, sustainably, and even to have broader impact, was to focus and enable a better profit um orientation in the organization. And so you instantly saw behavior changing. You had people who uh were previously just margin focused asking the question of well, if we um don't get enough of a return in doing that, what would we have to give up uh in parts, other parts of our mission orientation? What other initiatives would we have to give up? And are we willing to make that trade-off? So uh they really brought a much more balanced perspective to how to run a great organization, which ultimately meant they were better fulfilling their mission purpose, had greater impact around the world, and this is a worldwide organization, um, and uh were able to do much more good in the world.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

What I would add to it would be that at in the in the Cavi days, we applied this first to our kind of leaders, executive team, the leadership team, and that we kind of went through a process similar to what Kevin described with his client that he had done, where it really kind of shifted the paradigm around how it's you know, with good margin we can have better mission, and that's what everyone wanted. But we also took it to our sales team, and that was kind of the big shift because the salespeople were kind of like, why do I need this? I'm just trying to make a sell. But our premise was you're also part of the solution to what we need to do as a cup as Covey Leadership Center, as a company, to help build financial strength so that we could have more margin in order to have more mission. You are part of it, and you can help us do this in making better deals and the like. But we also told them that this will help you be a better value-added partner to your clients and to your prospects. And that's what happened is that they not only helped the company, they helped their clients better because with a business acumen focus, they could go in and understand how those companies that they were trying to serve, how they made money, and therefore how what we were offering them could help them better succeed in being more profitable and therefore more sustainable and have more purpose for them. And and that was kind of a bonus that people weren't expecting. And when they saw that suddenly, as salespeople, they not only were helping our company more by understanding how they could make better deals, but they were helping their clients succeed better. And that was very exciting that they helped their customers as well as the company, and therefore also themselves.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Yeah. Matter of fact, Stephen, um, probably 25 to 30 percent of our training or work is with sales organizations. Really? Yeah. We help them become trusted business advisors. And so uh even before they make a sales call, and and AI is a great enabler of this, um, they get really current using business acumen, understanding skills and our models to really understand what their client is focused on, what their needs are. So as they come in, it's not just, hey, here's what we do and here's how we can help. It's boy, your executives are focused on these three things. Here's how I think we can help you out. And so it puts a salesperson in a whole much, uh, a whole different light and uh creates a you know a trusted business advisor, which is what companies today, you know, are looking for. So, and by the way, uh, you know, we've got a book coming out here in the next few months that will be around business acumen for sales.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

So uh thanks for bringing that up, Steven. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I remember it distinctly, both for the salespeople. That was kind of the bonus. We started first with our own people. The bonus was if this works with salespeople too. And they're they they become trusted partners.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

I was gonna say, I'm glad you mentioned it because business acumen for sales success, the book is coming out soon. So we'll we'll have a few episodes specifically around that as well. Um, awesome. So, Kevin, one more one more question. Um, when you look back at what acumen learning has become, what makes you proud?

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Yeah, well, we're now uh 23 years in business. Uh Stephen, if you can believe that, time time goes in a blink. I was a young man at 40 when we started this. But um, I think a few things that really um make me proud. One is that uh we every year we create a uh you know a set of goals. One A is always uh our goals around how to improve our culture. Um it's a real focus for us. Uh we care about our employees, we care about being a good organization. And that's paid off with better business results. But to, and I'm really proud of the fact we've never laid an employee off in our 23 years. Now, we've had some ups and downs. I mean, the global financial crisis that hit everybody in a big way. COVID, I mean, much of our uh the work we do is face to face. We had to pivot within a month uh to be able to address uh, you know, our delivery in a virtual world. Uh, fortunately, we had done it with already some clients before that time. But that was another big pivot that impacted the company a big way. And we entered each of those with this frame of mind of look, we're gonna keep the team intact. We're gonna be bumped and bruised a bit, but we're gonna figure out how to learn from this and we're gonna come out okay. And so I'm really proud of the fact that um we've kept a focus on our culture, on our employees. Uh, many companies, many publicly traded companies and otherwise, see employees as an expendable asset. And I'm gonna go back to your father and grandfather, you know, Stephen Arcovey, who um said you don't only treat the individual as an employee, but also treat the whole employee. Um, so that you not only get their back, you get their hearts and minds by seeing them as a whole individual, you know, physical, mental, spiritual, social, emotional um areas that impact them. And so if you recognize that with your employees and address all those areas, which we do every year, that's our one A. Our one B is then financial results. And again, those are very synergistic. You treat your people well, they deliver better business results. If you get better business results, you can reinvest more in your employees. And so you get that natural um upward, you know, virtuous cycle, if you will. So I'm really proud that we strive, we're not perfect, but we strive to be not only a good business that gets good business results, but a good organization that treats the whole uh individual within the company. I'd say a second is that um, you know, you wouldn't think business and financial acumen would be the hottest topic within an organization, but we are regularly the highest-rated course a company provides across all of their training initiatives. And uh, you know, again, I I would have thought it might be something different, like, you know, a focus on communications, um, you know, or teamwork or something like that. I and so I'm I'm excited that we provide something that people are often hungry for. They, again, I said this earlier, they want to know how they matter, how they fit in, and how they make a difference. And so um I'm I'm excited that our organization has figured out how to deliver a tough topic, business and financial acumen, in a way that's engaging, um, in a way that uh has the uh our participants interactive. It's very customized for them. And ultimately, it's something they're hungry for, something they've been, they've kind of had this innate need to really understand what they're a part of and how they can contribute to that.

SPEAKER_03 39:45

And I'll just add, I'm proud to be a co-founder of such a great organization, doing such meaningful work that makes an impact on the lives not only of the companies that you're that we're serving, but also on the people that are a part of it. And and it is it is a really an extension of this whole person. And the way Kevin has been leading and running the company is exactly that. I love the 1A and the 1B, but the 1A actually being the people in the culture and the 1B being the economics. Usually it's the other way around. And usually people are just kind of trying to elevate the culture a little bit to be even close to the performance. And and and you know, we're we're saying that acumen uh learning and what Kevin is leading here is you know, it's actually the people and the culture is one A. And we also need to have the economic performance, the financial performance one B. We got to perform. We want to do it in a way that grows people. We want to perform, but we want to do it in a way that inspires trust. And so being a trying to be a model of that is meaningful because we need models and mentors in our world today. So proud of Acumen for being a model of that and proud of Acumen for having a 23-year track record of delivering great results for our clients. Yeah, thank you, Steven.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

So thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Dad. Uh, thank you for sharing the story behind Acumen Learning. I think it's clear that this wasn't just the launch of a company, but it was the start of a movement to help people think more clearly, lead more confidently, and drive real impact inside their organizations. And the journey continues. So in our next episode, I'm gonna be sitting down with Kevin again to break down the framework at the heart of all of this, which is the five business drivers. Um, so if you've ever wanted to understand how companies really work or how to think like an executive, you will not want to miss that episode. So thanks again, Kevin, dad, appreciate your time. And thank you, listeners, for listening.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Well, I appreciate both of you for your time on this, Steven. Um, MR. I I I really I love and appreciate you, and and thank you for spending your time. Um I know you're I know you're busy, so I really appreciate you being on the