As a business leader, I have hungered for wisdom in many circumstances. Proverbs provides it. Dan and Drew bring to life this ageless guide and how you can lead conscientiously and courageously so that your company can flourish and perform. Take it with you to work!– Cheryl Bachelder, Former CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Board Member at Pier One, Chick-fil-A, and Procter & Gamble, and author of Dare to Serve 

Timeless Wisdom and Modern Application for a Sharper Edge in Business

Business owners and organizational leaders use instinct, crowdsourcing, market factors, compromise, and experience to make decisions. All of these are valid, but can still yield a limited perspective and dull overconfidence. This can result in poor decisions, expensive losses, and deep wounds.

Through their own entrepreneurial ventures, and in their work helping thousands of business leaders grow—personally and professionally, Dan and Drew help you:

  • Understand timeless leadership principles of Proverbs with application for today
  • Gain clarity on how to make wise decisions
  • Accelerate business growth and remove needless limitations
  • Become a better leader of yourself, your business, your employees, and your community

What’s inside:

  • An outline of Proverb’s fundamental truths and how they apply to business and leadership
  • A relevant way to digest Proverbs through real-world case studies
  • Actionable insights on business processes, frameworks, mental models, and application exercises
  • An Index of the entire book of Proverbs by topic for easy search and application

Get Wisdom. Make Better Decisions. Be a Better Leader. Sharpen your edge.

Dan Cooper & Drew Hiss are successful entrepreneurs & business builders seeking to help Owners & CEOs obtain wisdom, find purpose, and optimize growth and impact. Drew founded Acumen in 2015. Dan is President and Principal. Acumen is a catalytic, challenging, bold, fun, adventurous, and unconventional growth community for CEOs and business owners.

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The book of Proverbs teaches us to cry out for wisdom. That truth should be no different for our businesses than our daily life. Drew and Dan help drive that point home in Sharpen. – David Green, CEO & Founder, Hobby Lobby, Inc.

This book isn’t about fuzzy buzzwords words like “trust” and “culture” and “brand.” This is real-world, actionable, do-tomorrow (and don’t-do) perspective from the book of wisdom: The book of Proverbs.


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Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper co-founded ej4, a video-based online training company, in 2003, and was its CEO until selling in 2012. During his time with ej4, he grew the company from a startup to a nationally-recognized firm, serving Fortune 500 clients. As of the 2012, ej4 was serving 1,000+ customers, delivering millions of program views, was highly profitable and debt-free.

Dan took his leadership and technology experience to work on and in the Sparklab startup business accelerator as well as lead change management and profit building initiatives for mid-market companies.

Today, he is the President and partner of Acumen, an accelerator community experience built for CEOs and Owners of strong and growing companies. Dan is also a certified Executive Coach credentialed through the International Coaching Federation.

He and his wife, Ali, have been married for 19 years, have three children and attend Cure of Ars church in Leawood, KS. Dan enjoys all things soccer, snowboarding, and burning meat on the backyard barbecue grill.

Drew Hiss

Drew Hiss launched his outsourced payroll and HR technology solutions company, Checkdate Solutions, in 1994. The entrepreneurial venture was a classic bootstrap start-up whose launch plan underestimated capital needs and ramp up time by significant multiples.

The adventure predictably included scrapping for cash, overhauling the business model, rebranding, refocusing, redirecting resources, shifting tech platforms, praying, seeking counsel and wisdom, etc..

Not surprisingly, deep entrepreneurial scar tissue was forged. Ultimately Checkdate Solutions became one of Kansas City’s fastest growing companies and was named one of the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce Best Businesses not once, but twice. Additionally, Checkdate Solutions ranked as one of KC’s top 100 fastest growing companies for nine consecutive years and was in the top 25 nationally in its industry.

Today’s workplace culture tends to compartmentalize personal virtues from commerce, creating silos and compartmentalization between business, family, community, values and faith. But as a CEO, Drew and his company grew when he “decompartmentalized:” on his journey, he learned to integrate his life of commerce and his life of family, faith and values.

Drew merged Checkdate Solutions with payroll industry leader Paycor, stepping away from the company in 2008 and serving on its board for eight years. Drew remains an owner in the firm. Today, Drew’s heart to help business owners leverage the influence of their business platform for eternal impact is at the core of Acumen which he founded late in 2015. Acumen is a catalytic iron-sharpening-iron environment forged from the fiery furnace of entrepreneurial battle, marketplace survival and integration of the timeless wisdom of the ages.

Drew and his wife, Sarah have been married for 30 years and have four children (plus two beautiful daughters in law) ranging in age from 25 to 20. He is a raving distance congregant of Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette, CO. Drew enjoys snowboarding, hunting, cycling, hiking and a variety of outdoor activities and adventures including running with his three dogs.

I love this book. Two authors that have a deep understanding of both business and scripture write about my favorite topics: wisdom and successful living. If you want to learn timeless truths that relate to the challenges and opportunities in your life, read this book.– Mark Sanborn, Author of The Fred Factor and The Potential Principle

Q & A With Authors Dan Cooper And Drew Hiss  

Q.  Why did you decide to write this book? 
A.  The book of Proverbs is a favorite book in the Bible for both of us. It is filled with lessons on everything in life- How to live, how to raise kids, what the role of money should be, etc. There is also a great deal of powerful and practical advice for businesspeople. Written by Solomon, one of the richest men in history and certainly one of the wisest, Proverbs should be required reading in every business school. The problem is that Solomon was apparently ADD because every chapter skips around between subjects and ping-pongs back and forth. It can be hard to follow. So, we re-organized the book of Proverbs into subjects and wrote our book around those subjects that every business leader will surely face at one time or another.
Q.  You guys have had great success in business and sold your respective companies. Why this book and why now?  

A. First of all, we both believe very strongly that we each have a mission in life and how old we are or how much money we have in the bank has very little to do with accomplishing that mission. Like most entrepreneurs, we made our share of mistakes. We started Acumen to have a community for people like us who need to sit down with others who are in the same boat and be transparent about what’s going on for them. This book is really just an extension of that work and the many conversations and interactions we have had through the years.

Also, we realized that a book like this would have been really helpful to us as we launched and grew our businesses. As we organized the proverbs and wrote the book, we realized that Solomon’s admonitions were timeless. In fact, they could have been written today. Great ideas are like that.

Q.  What do you hope to accomplish with this book and your work?

A.    We’d like to think that this book can be both a handbook for life, but also a North Star to follow when your business gets complicated. As businesspeople we make tough decisions every day, oftentimes on the fly and most often without a lot of feedback from our ‘multitude of counselors’.

Our hope is that business leaders will keep a copy of this book on their desk and refer to it often as they face each day with all that it brings.


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