Strategic Hiring and Data-Driven Decisions: Business Success with Jackie Lord and Michael Erath
In this Phoenix Business Radio episode, Karen Nowicki explores the key to business success with Jackie Lord, CEO of Elevate Consulting Group, and Michael Erath, Founder of Next Level Growth. The conversation delves into strategies in hiring an A-Player Team, Culture Index integration, defining success for all employees within the organization, and the critical need for proven measurement tools. Michael and Jackie highlight the importance of data, clear expectations, and a people-first approach in driving successful business transformations, expressing their shared passion for positive change, navigating tough conversations, and strategically focusing on people and data for organizational growth.
Ready to transform your business with a strategic focus on people and data? Tune in to this episode with Karen, Jackie, and Michael for insights into driving organizational success.
Today’s CEOs report 80% of their company’s challenges are people related, taking up critical time, money, and resources.
With the mantra of Analytics over Instincts, Jackie Lord is passionate about guiding Chief Executives, Presidents, and high-performance Visionaries to exponentially grow and streamline their talent strategy and the trajectory of their businesses.
Her insights and strategies have transformed businesses worldwide and changed the way leaders think about people for the rest of their lives. Leveraging laser-accurate data, Jackie uses a process she calls Aligning People with Profit™ to get the right people in the right seats to make businesses more productive and profitable.
She specializes in revitalizing employee engagement, reducing turnover, uncovering hidden talent, and increasing bottom-line revenue. But most importantly, she makes businesses unstoppable.
Jackie is a well-respected and sought-after trusted advisor to CEO’s and leadership teams of growth-focused businesses. She has over 20 years of experience working with Fortune 100 companies including Amazon, Boeing, and JP Morgan Chase to over 60 mid-size companies and start-ups.
She is the Founding Principal & CEO of Elevate Consulting Group, a firm dedicated to infusing the human element back into business. Leveraging laser-accurate data, she uses her personally developed process to get the right people in the right seats for radical scalability and growth.
Jackie attended UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and USC Marshall School of Business. She holds multiple degrees in Statistics, Business, and Entrepreneurship.
Connect with Jackie on LinkedIn.
Most entrepreneurial leaders achieve success, to some degree, at the expense of their relationships, their time with family, their physical health, or emotional health. We believe it doesn’t have to be this way. We believe you deserve more than a return on investment from your business, you deserve a meaningful Return on Life. 
This belief drives our daily purpose of Helping Entrepreneurial Leaders Build Elite Organizations™ through what we refer to as the Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations®.
The entrepreneurial world is full of “Business Operating Systems” that do some things well but often fall short in other key areas. The problem is that they typically offer a one-size-fits-all approach and are more about the system than the user. When you’re growing, one size doesn’t fit well for very long.
The Next Level Growth approach focuses on YOU and RESULTS over purity to a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all system. We meet you where you are and help bring the right tools and concepts, at the right times, regardless of the source.
We do this based on YOUR individual needs, to help YOU and YOUR team excel at each of the Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations®, to ensure YOU reach the summit of the mountain YOU are climbing.
In the first 15 years of his career, Michael Erath took over an $8M family manufacturing business which he grew to $45M in revenue with over 200 employees during his 15 years as President & CEO.
Being tied closely to the housing market and due to a significant betrayal from a business partner who eventually served prison time for embezzlement and fraud, during the financial collapse of 2009 Michael lost it all.
Late in 2010, Michael leveraged all that he had and started a new business. It was during the startup of his new business that Michael was introduced to the book Traction®. Shortly thereafter, Michael began implementing EOS® as the basic foundation in his new business.
With EOS® as the foundation, Michael then used his past experience with other systems to plug the holes that he found to exist in EOS®, layering on strategy and cash management tools from Scaling Up; recruiting and hiring A-Player playbooks from Topgrading; and other advanced business tools he had learned over his career and from his time in YPO. This customized approach allowed him to grow the business rapidly and in 2015 make the Inc. 5000.
Running the business on a complete and custom-tailored system gave Michael the entrepreneurial freedom to eventually exit the business and focus on his true passion: Taking all that his entrepreneurial life has given him, sharing it openly and vulnerably, and in doing so giving it all back as a full-time business guide.
Since 2015, Michael has been a record holding Certified EOS Implementer®, a Certified Scaling Up Coach and a Certified Pinnacle Business Guide. As the only business guide in the US to have simultaneously held all three certifications, Michael shares from his vast knowledge as well as his more than 20 years of experience in the trenches of the entrepreneurial world to help his clients bring their dreams to reality.
Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, Michael guides them in implementing a customized, holistic operating system that can only be done by someone who has lived through it all.
Connect with Michael on LinkedIn and follow Next Level Growth on Instagram.
Kelly Lorenzen, CEO of KLM, is an award-winning entrepreneur with over 15 years of business-ownership experience. She is also a certified project management professional.
Steve Zylstra serves as president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council, a role he assumed in 2007. He is responsible for strategy, operations, finance and policy development. Zylstra is a vocal spokesman for the value technology can provide in raising social and economic standards in Arizona.
Karen Nowicki is a successful author, speaker and the creator of Deep Impact Leadership™ and SoulMarks Coaching™. She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious national Choice Award® for her book and personal development retreat. Karen was crowned the first-ever “Mompreneur of the Year” Award in 2010 for the southwestern states. She was recognized for her leadership, business acumen, and work-life balance.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Bianca Buliga is a trilingual first-generation American of Romanian ethnicity. A marketing professional with experience in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, Bianca currently works as Director, Marketing & Communications for the Arizona Technology Council.
Michelle Jones is the President and Co-Founder of 
