Joe Edwards is the founder and chair of The Leadership Forum; a consulting firm specializing in helping businesses and business executives grow through proper strategic and business planning, marketing and sales training, executive coaching, and employee and management training.
Having been a successful entrepreneur with two ventures being sold to publicly traded companies and having served in the capacity as Vice President of Marketing and Customer Service for a Fortune 100 Company whose sales exceeded $150,000,000, Mr. Edwards provides a broad perspective of talents and expertise.
He is a qualified facilitator of the Executive Insight program, a highly recognized strategic planning process tool designed to assist companies in creating a strategic plan and the corresponding actions plans required for implementation.
Mr. Edwards’ list of clients include, the renowned Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation where he is a trainer and facilitator for the FastTrac Entrepreneurial Business & Strategic Planning Program, a consultant to the Center For Entrepreneurial Leadership, and a certified trainer for the Successful Selling: Helping Customers Buy, Sales Training Program.
Mr. Edwards is a certified Achieve Global trainer, the training company of choice by 400 of the Fortune 500 companies in America, offering training in the areas of, leadership and customer service. Additionally, he is a qualified facilitator for Team Tracks, a training program for establishing and improving teams within an organization.
Other capacities Mr. Edwards has served include being an adjunct faculty member of the Johnson County Community College, a contract consultant for the Small Business Development Center and a staff consultant to the Johnson County Business Tech Center, a business incubator.
Mr. Edwards’ articles on the Customer Adoption Process Marketing Model have been published, and he has spoken to a number of groups on the subject to include the Kauffman Foundation FastTrac Program, Rockhurst College Executive Fellows, Keller Graduate School of Management, the National Career Information System Association, the Society of Certified Public Accountants, the Institute of Management Consultants and the Association for Women in Communications.
Among his other achievements, Mr. Edwards was the first recipient of the prestigious award of Outstanding Strategic & Business Plan Trainer for the Midwest Region from the Ewing Kauffman Foundation Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and one of only four trainers in the country who has been given the award twice.