The Sharpen Podcast

Remote work and AI are changing how we lead, so what do we lose when we’re never in the room? In this episode of The Sharpen Podcast, David Ellis interviews Dan Cooper about the value of in-person relationships for CEOs and founders. They cover isolation, trust, the “both/and” of AI, and why real change happens in circles, not rows.

Steve Van Diest sits down with Mark Adelmann, former investment firm CFO and now an Acumen executive coach, to talk about leading through the 2008 crisis, a $13 million arbitration loss, and what it means to do everything from a place of peace.

Why do some businesses grow while similar companies stall?In this episode of The Sharpen Podcast, host Dan Cooper talks with Margaret Reynolds, former Chief Strategy Officer at Hallmark Cards and Acumen's newest Growth Catalyst in Kansas City.They cover "business gravity," strategic clarity, leading vs. lagging indicators, and how to find the intersection between what your market wants and what you do best, so you can plan for 2x growth instead of more of the same.

After a decade running Acumen, Dan Cooper took a full month off, no email, no meetings, no contact with his team. In this episode, he sits down with David Ellis to unpack what he learned about rest, trust, identity, and leadership once the business was stripped away for thirty days, including what his team did with the authority he left behind.

In this episode of The Sharpen Podcast, host Steve Van Diest sits down with Steve Donnigan, founder of A65 Consulting and a fellow member of the Acumen community, to talk about the eight-year journey of building a boutique contract engineering firm that helps medical device companies bring life-changing products to market.Together, they look back on the calculated leap out of a stable engineering job, the brutal test of losing major clients and income during 2020, and the slow, ongoing work of learning to trust God and trust a team rather than trying to do everything alone.Connect with Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevedonnigan/Learn more about A65 Consulting: https://a65consulting.com/Learn more about Acumen and Peer Advisory Teams: https://go.acumenimpact.com/why-acumen