Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh
Are you ready to take your personal brand and business development to the next level? Then you won't want to miss the exciting new podcast dedicated to helping you tell your story in the most compelling way possible. Join me as I guide you through the process of building a magnetic personal brand, creating valuable relationships, and mastering the art of networking. With my expert tips and practical strategies, you'll be well on your way to 5-star success in both your professional and personal life. Don't wait - start building your 5-STAR BRAND TODAY!
Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh
From $45M Empire to Ground Zero: How Elite Leaders Transform Crisis Into Unstoppable Growth
What if entrepreneurial success didn't have to come at the expense of your health, relationships, and happiness? Michael Erath, founder and CEO of Next Level Growth, challenges conventional business wisdom with a revolutionary approach born from personal experience.
After watching his manufacturing business crumble when his partner embezzled half a million dollars in 2008, Erath rebuilt from nothing to create a thriving consultancy with a powerful "just cause" - entrepreneurs deserve more than just financial returns; they deserve a meaningful return on life.
Through his work with hundreds of businesses, Erath has identified five core obsessions that separate elite organizations from the rest: great people, inspiring purpose, optimized playbooks, a culture of performance, and growing profits and cash flow. Unlike prescriptive operating systems that force companies into rigid molds, these principles provide a flexible framework that adapts to each organization's unique culture and goals.
"Most entrepreneurs achieve ROI at the expense of their friendships, family time, physical health, and emotional health," Erath explains. "With the risk they take and the leverage they have to take on, it doesn't seem fair." His firm tackles this injustice by guiding business leaders through customized growth strategies that prevent common pitfalls like outgrowing early-stage talent, failing to document crucial processes, or treating financial success as merely a byproduct.
What truly sets Next Level Growth apart is their commitment to practicing what they preach. They require no contracts, take all financial risk in new relationships, and only get paid if clients find value - resulting in relationships lasting nearly a decade and an impressive Net Promoter Score of 81.
Whether you're struggling to scale beyond current limitations or simply want to reclaim your life from a business that's become a prison, Erath's five obsessions framework offers a path forward that honors both your ambitions and your wellbeing. Discover how to build an elite organization without sacrificing what matters most.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!
Welcome everybody to the Final Brand Podcast. This is your host, grant McGaugh. We're going to go all the way out to a very, very hot location.
Speaker 2:I mean hot, hot meaning it's actually very hot.
Speaker 1:I think it was 114 degrees is what I've been told out in Phoenix Arizona, where I run into Mr Michael Erath. He's a next-level guy and I'm not talking about it because everybody's at 70 degrees, 80 degrees and he's at 110, but he's hot like that. Right, this guy is like super hot. He's next level in what he does. So, Michael, you like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely. Thank you, grant. Michael Erath I am the founder and CEO of Next Level Growth. Michael Erath I am the founder and CEO of Next Level Growth. We're a firm of former business owners, ceos and presidents turned business guides. We've got 10 of us across the country and we're helping entrepreneurial leaders do everything they need to to build elite organizations.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, I'm inspired by that already and what you're doing, and I love the name Next Level Growth because you always get an image and a picture, and that's what I do. I work through imagery, and so when I see Next Level Growth and what you're doing, I want to understand, though from your perspective, how do you define your vision for helping companies achieve the best version of their business?
Speaker 2:So that's a really good question. As you unpack that, I think we talk about elite organizations and in the book so Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations the book I released in March that really gets deep into what we do and it really provides a how-to. So instead of just giving concepts, we actually give you here are some things you can do to implement this in your business. But I talk about the definition of an elite organization is different for every organization. Some people want to scale to a certain point, some people want to achieve an exit and have financial freedom. Some people just want their life back. They don't want their business to be a prison anymore. So that definition of elite is very unique to the individual founders, owners of organizations.
Speaker 2:But what we've really found is, over the last probably two decades, business operating systems have become quite commonplace in the entrepreneurial community and while that's been very positive, by their nature these business operating systems are often highly prescriptive and really kind of have a prescriptive system to offer. It puts primacy on the system, not the user, and it forces people regardless of their circumstances, cultures or desires. It forces them into kind of a predefined mold and that doesn't always fit right, especially when you're growing. If you think about an adolescent that's growing, one size fits all doesn't fit for very long, right? It does when you're growing.
Speaker 2:If you think about you know, if you think about an adolescent that's growing, one size fits all doesn't fit for very long, right, it does when you stop growing. And so what we've really focused on is trying to flip that on its head and focus on. What we've discovered is five key principles that underlie every elite organization. This holds true in business, it holds true in nonprofits, it holds true in sports and regardless of the source of the tools and concepts. We work with entrepreneurs and their executive teams to really lean into and obsess about these five things and go through a constant improvement process to build out underlying systems and structures to truly become a category of one in their space by excelling in these five areas, and so, as a result, they end up with a business operating system that underlies this, but that's all custom, tailored to them because it's based on a pursuit of these five principles, irrespective or irregardless of what the actual tools are and where they come from.
Speaker 1:Man, now, before we jump down, you talked about something that piqued my interest in the same thing that you're talking about, some things that Simon Sinek came out with that we are looking for just cause. I think you mentioned just cause and we're looking for. We establish what is the ideal cause and we're looking for. You know, we establish what is the ideal that we're trying to aspire to. We're not this ideal. Today.
Speaker 1:We talk about some of the principles of different countries and they come out like this is our declaration and our independence and this is what we believe in. But we all know that at the time you're not there, but you aspire to do that. If you're a sporting team, right, we just had I remember, not today because I'm from Florida right, so the Florida Panthers just went back to back in the hockey world. I'm pretty excited about it, but I was around, you know them for years and they never won a championship, right, they aspired every year. You aspire to be a champion and you do the work and you go through the motions, but you don't realize.
Speaker 1:You know what it may take two decades to truly, as an organization, reach that particular desired state. This is important to understand. You focus you said the core focus. Now, what is the core focus? How does the entrepreneurial operating system, as you said, the EOS model and this is what I want to understand how does it uniquely support fast growth companies in maintaining their clarity and their traction and their alignment as they try to ascend to this goal?
Speaker 2:So one thing just to be clear. So I spent about five years working within the EOS community as one of their coaches. I left in 2020 and started Next Level Growth, and that's when I kind of made this pivot from having a prescriptive system to more of a principled approach with more flexibility, and so one of the things so, to your point, when I was with EOS, but even beyond that, as I was starting Next Level Growth when I was with EOS, but even beyond that, as I was starting Next Level Growth we worked with companies to really understand their purpose. Or, as Simon Sinek wrote about in his earlier book, start With why. What's the why behind the organization?
Speaker 2:And a few years ago, I read another book, a newer book by Simon Sinek called the Infinite Game, and he talks about things that are important if you're going to build a business or an organization intended to outlast you, and part of his evolution of thought, which I found really intriguing and we've evolved and modified how we teach strategy in some regards as a result of this in this new book he talks about this concept of a just cause, and so the way he explains it is that your purpose, or your why is your origin story. It's why you built the business, it's why you started it in the first place. The just cause, I think, gives greater clarity and alignment, and it draws people in. The just cause defines it as a vision of a future state that does not currently exist, but one about which you are so passionate. You'll devote your entire career to its advancement. And so how that resonated with us. We had landed on our purpose or why, around helping entrepreneurial leaders build elite organizations, and there's a lot of flexibility in what the definition of elite is, as I mentioned earlier. However, as we started to think about just cause, it really forced me to think and go deep into well, why is that purpose important to me? Why does that really matter? And it really goes back to my entrepreneurial journey myself Very quickly.
Speaker 2:I was second generation in the family manufacturing business. I brought on a partner to help us vertically integrate, became really close friends with that partner, became his son's godfather, found out in 2008, he had embezzled half a million dollars and was committing bank fraud. I had taken the business to about from eight to 45 million in revenue. We had about 200 employees, and we ended up my wife and I lost everything in 2009 as a result of his crimes. He spent two years in federal prison and we had to restart and kind of bootstrap things. We built a second business in the same industry, grew that to about 7 million before I exited and started deciding to take kind of the second half of my life to give back from everything I learned in the first half.
Speaker 2:But what that led to was this idea of a just cause. And I had been a member of YPO, I still am and was a member of EO Entrepreneurs Organization and I spent a little bit of time in Vistage and in all these different peer groups. Something as I reflected on it became really clear to me, and it's that most entrepreneurs whether they're currently going through it, they've been through it or they will go through it to some degree achieve a return on investment from their business at the expense of their friendships, their time with family, their physical health, even their emotional health, their time with family, their physical health, even their emotional health. And when you think about the risk that entrepreneurs take I mean they put their homes on the line. Their entire financial well-being is on the line. With the risk they take and the leverage they have to take on at times, it doesn't seem fair that you would have to trade off those things to the degree that most of us do.
Speaker 2:And so that's where I started to really get clear on this just cause and the way we kind of say it is that we believe that entrepreneurial leaders deserve to earn more than a return on investment. They deserve to earn a meaningful return on life, and that drives our daily purpose. So that's kind of how we frame it. So just cause is that belief statement, something that we believe in. The time will, I don't think, ever come where we don't have to make those trade-offs as entrepreneurs, right, but that's something that we want to advance and we do that.
Speaker 2:That's actually the belief that drives our daily purpose of helping build elite organizations. So it also helped frame, when I built out this firm, why I wanted to only have partners and guides as part of the firm who are former owners, ceos or presidents of businesses that reached 10 million or more in revenue and had 50 or more employees. Because I think if you had full P&L responsibility in an organization that at least reached that size, you have likely experienced all of the emotions, all of the challenges, all of the struggles that a 50 million, $100 million company will as well, and so it gives you a level of empathy, it gives you a level of understanding that I think if you haven't had that experience, it's very difficult then to coach and mentor somebody if they're going through something that you haven't experienced or been through.
Speaker 1:I tell you you've answered the next question. I was even thinking about asking him, meaning what makes you different, what's your differentiation? And you've alluded to that. I really, really appreciate that. I understand exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Even in my own practice, we think about the origin story and then you think about the I call it the North Star. What is your current, what are you trying to accomplish? And then you start to think about, you know, that gap in between. Is it going to be worth the time and effort and struggle to achieve that North Star? Do you truly understand the endeavor that you're asking yourself to accomplish? And, to your point, the relationships that you have. Who's on board with you? Are your family on board with you? Are your relationships, your friends, everything else? And then when you talk about rolling the dice, I mean if you're going to put your financial well-being honestly, you know what. I'm taking these chips and I'm putting it on the table and I've got. I'm going to run and run and run until I've crossed this finish line.
Speaker 1:That takes a lot of moxie. I call it being brave. You got to be brave in order to do something like that, to your point in your origin story, which I felt. Here you are, you got your partner in crime, so to speak, right. Literally you're going to bat, you know, and you're ramping really good. I mean, you get to the 40 50 million dollar market revenue. You're doing good, and then to find out this guy is doing something illegal.
Speaker 1:That puts you both now in jeopardy. Kudos to you to like, hey, you stop, dust yourself off. You're your wife like, let's try again. And you still are able to get to seven figures in business. Michael hats off. That is not. That's not easy to do by any stretch of the imagination, and you're able to do that. So you've got some values, and here's my question. You've got some company values like excellence, impact and I'm going to put resilience out there some authenticity, some skin in the game, some servant leadership that are central and I want you to share a story. You shared some of that already, but if you can share a story of where one of these values made a tangible difference for a client of yours, can you elaborate on that? Sure?
Speaker 2:Sure. So you know, this goes back to that idea of the just cause and talking about what you believe in. I think when I'm talking to a prospect or another entrepreneur, I have learned to be really open and vulnerable about my story and what I went through. Vulnerable about my story and what I went through. And it was interesting, right I mentioned before we started recording, I was listening to your podcast with Dr Davida Price and she was talking about sharing some of her own trauma, openly and vulnerably, and how that one it allows her to speak from a place of empathy and work with people from a place of empathy. But it also, I think it helps people see you as real and it helps you connect with people.
Speaker 2:What I tend to find is, when I share that story, it's remarkable the number of business leaders that will share similar stories, the things they've been through that they never talk about, Because I think, as entrepreneurs, we feel like it's a failure if we do. And so what I? What I have found is when, when I can connect with somebody or one of our partners can connect with somebody, on that level, it it forms a sense of a bond because it's like, okay, we have, we have a really difficult shared experience. Now you know yours was different than mine, but they were highly similar, and that becomes almost like a magnet between us that draws us together, because now it's kind of like, okay, we're troops in the foxhole together, right, it's like it creates something relational very quickly because we're talking about and focusing on a belief. It's not about how what I do is better than what you do or whatever else. It's about. Let's get aligned on that belief first, and then it allows us to lean into, if I think, the second part of that then.
Speaker 2:So when we go from just cause and we believe the same thing, so it makes sense to see if we can do something together, then the next is our purpose around building elite organizations. And this is almost kind of like a filter I use when I'm talking to a prospect, because if somebody wants a better return on life but they aren't willing to do the work that it takes to build something elite, I don't want to waste their money and I don't want them wasting my time, right, and so all of this helps kind of frame a filter to determine that if I'm working with the right people and they're willing to trust me as their guide. We can do some really great stuff together, but that those things have to be aligned. It can't be broken. There's a. There's a great. I've had several clients really lean into this. There's a great short Nick Saban video. You're from Oklahoma so you may not like Nick Saban too much, but I'll. I'm from Nebraska.
Speaker 2:Oklahoma was an enemy, but I hear what you're saying oh my gosh, okay, I thought you were okay, you're in Oklahoma now, right?
Speaker 1:Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I thought I heard you say Oklahoma, oh and the A, I'm an.
Speaker 2:ACC guy, so don't hold that against me. But Saban talks about this thing. He calls it five choices and he says we all have five choices in life as to how we want to do things. Have you seen this? I don't know if you've seen this?
Speaker 1:No, I haven't. I want to hear it.
Speaker 2:He says we can choose to be bad at what we do, which unfortunately some people do. We can choose to be average, we can choose to be good, and he said choosing to be good is probably about all God expects with whatever abilities he gave you. But he said you can also choose to be excellent or elite. If you choose to be excellent or elite, you have to have a special discipline, a special drive, a special focus and passion to do things to a high standard and a high level all of the time. And if you don't have that, you probably never get past good. So I always share that early when I'm talking with somebody because I want to see how they react to that. And if all you want is to be good, that's perfectly fine. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. It's your decision. But if you choose to be, or you want to be, excellent or elite, like I, want to know that you're really willing to do that level of work. And it kind of ties into our core values that are at Next Level Growth.
Speaker 2:Our core values are take ownership, be resourceful, have a thirst for learning and be fun to work with Right and one of the the interesting thing is and I think when you, as you talk about values, when you get into your organization's values if they're truly authentic, I think you can look at your personal life and think about who you enjoy being around and who you don't, and how they do or don't align with those same values. And when I look at my friends, when I look at people I don't enjoy being around the people that are closest to me, as, as human beings, they take ownership of things. They're just wired that way right. They're resourceful people you know, through very different mediums, they're always trying to learn.
Speaker 2:You know they're. They're. They're focused on growth and they're fun. They smile, they laugh. You know they're focused on growth and they're fun. They smile, they laugh. You know they're uh, they can joke around. And I think understanding those values and being able to use those for clients you work with, for people you associate with personally, all of those things, uh, are very important in how you operationalize relationships in your life.
Speaker 1:I agree with that. I call that authenticity. People are authentic and you alluded to earlier when you're vulnerable, when you can share things that are. You know they're difficult, they were emotional, you know things that happened in your past. Maybe it could be trauma, but when you can very openly share with someone else not just because to share your story, you know, hey, you know feel sorry for me, type of thing. No, it's a teaching tool to show that I understand, that I've been through these things and that I've moved on.
Speaker 1:You can too, right, depending on where you're at in your journey and I'm sure you talk to people at all phases of the entrepreneurial journey, whether you're a startup or now you've got your first. You know six figures. Now you're into seven figures, you're looking to get to eight. So now you're scaling and you're starting to see, hey, your North Star is in view. You can start to see these things. I want to understand I think our artists would want to understand what are some of those common growth traps? You know those common growth traps that you see in companies after they hit certain milestones, whether it's 5 million, maybe it's 50 million revenue. But how do you help those leaders break through those particular ceilings?
Speaker 2:So I'm going to frame this, if you don't mind, through the lens of these five obsessions that we've really discovered are underlying principles around organizations that become great. So the first obsession is great people, and this was really made popular in Jim Collins' book Good to Great back in 2001 when that released. He talks about this analogy of having the right people in the right seats on your bus seats on your bus. But very few people who agree with that concept have an underlying system that allows them to actually improve that within their businesses. Right, and so there's a healthcare CEO named Paul Batalden who I've got a quote from in the book. He said that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. So if you want a different result, you need a different system. Look at the systems that are underlying it.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about great people, yeah, these are people that fit the culture, they share the values, the behavioral core values of the business and they have the skill sets, the experience and the desire to consistently perform their roles to a high standard. And we can measure things around that. I think one of the traps to what you're asking is I've seen organizations scale and the leadership team around the founder is comprised of the people who help them get from a million dollars to five million dollars or a million to ten million, but now their goal is to get to 100 million and those early stage leaders were exactly who they needed for that first stage of growth. They were the ones who were, you know, I their COO of a restaurant company I worked with. You know this is the guy that, like opening up a new restaurant, is fixing plumbing because of sinks leaking.
Speaker 2:Like you, know, yeah, he's a COO but, like in that startup phase, you got to do that, you got to grind, you got to hustle and do those things, but at a certain level of scale to get from 10 to 50 or 10 to 100 those leaders are not equipped for that next stage. But the founder and this is perfectly natural, it's very much human nature that founder feels an obligation and a deep sense of loyalty. So we don't then go replace them and hire the people that we need to get to the 50 or 100. And so that ends up becoming a choke point or holding us back. And I think, as an entrepreneur in a privately held business, when the time comes that somebody who was a great fit for a certain stage is no longer the right fit going forward, we have the ability to make that transition as pleasant for them as possible. Right, we control the severance, we control the. You know, we can let them control the narrative, we can help them find the next organization, if we choose to do that, and we can do it in a way that's really kind both to the organization and its growth goals and also to the individual. I think it goes back to clear is kind. Right, if we have clear expectations and someone can no longer meet those expectations, then it's time to have a different conversation.
Speaker 2:One of the things I've learned as I've started now I'm in my 11th year as a business coach is that underlying most of our frustrations with people is unclear expectations. I think, at the end of the day, we're not really good at establishing clear expectations between individuals that report to us and ourselves, and that's what leads to a lot of frustration. So there's a lot of stuff in great people. But then the second obsession is what we call an inspiring purpose invest all of their marketing energy in external marketing and not internally marketing their vision, their purpose, their just cause, all of those things to employees and team members. And I think that's a big miss, because I could come to work for an organization and fit the values and have the skills and the experience, but if the leaders of that organization can help me, emotionally attached to an inspiring purpose, I will always bring more creativity, passion and energy to my work because I see it as part of something bigger and that literally works down to a frontline employee. It's just something you have to be intentional about. So great people, inspiring purpose.
Speaker 2:The third obsession is optimized playbooks. This is another area I see. Organizations often create bottlenecks that they don't need to, and the idea with optimized playbooks these are not detailed SOPs and work instructions. These are you know think about a football team lots of detail in how you run the plays, but the playbook is just making sure that, if this is the situation on the field, this is the strategy for the play. This is where everybody's going to move, so we know where everybody's going to be. What my role and responsibility is in this situation? And if all 11 players on your side of the ball execute that play properly and you consistently execute your plays properly throughout the game, you're likely to come out on top.
Speaker 2:It's usually the broken plays. That's where the other team gains an advantage. Same thing in our businesses, right? Whatever your business is, there are things that, throughout that workflow, are consistent every time and we need to systemize those things and create playbooks for people. These playbooks take pressure off of people when they're onboarding into their roles or when they're performing, and the challenge or the trap is that most entrepreneurs feel like I'm too busy to document those things. I'm too busy to do all of this. The irony is that the reason you're so busy is because you don't have those things right.
Speaker 2:If everybody knew what place to run you'd put out so many fires and then just kind of quickly the fourth and fifth. The fourth is a culture of performance. There's another choke point here, I think and this is not intended to be a punitive culture of performance kind of thing, but I think we've got to have a culture where people have clear expectations of what we need from them in their role. We have to have clear data so that they know when they're winning right. Imagine watching a sporting event with no scoreboard. Right, it would not be fun to watch. It would feel like you're watching a team practice. The players aren't going to play as hard. But if we know how much time's left, we know the score, we know some of the key stats. As humans, we tend to elevate our performance because we want to win. There's an innate desire in us to win. So we've got to create a culture where we have that data. It's available. People know the score, they know the expectations. But then we also have to build a system that's designed to coach and develop people who are underperforming, so long as those people are coachable. But there also need to be guardrails on that system so that if someone is not coachable, or they're coachable but they just don't have the aptitude for what we need of them in that role, the system will either coach them into a different role or it will coach them out of the organization. So we're constantly coaching people up or out who are not meeting expectations. We're doing it in a way to try to develop them. I find when companies do this well expectations and we're doing it in a way to try to develop them I find when companies do this well, four out of five people you're able to coach up. It's not as common that people can't make it. And the other thing is because it's very clear and it's very intentional and you're putting the effort into the people, but you're also making it clear that you can't escape accountability here. People who aren't able to make it will often, on their own terms, self-select an exit, which is great, because now they're not your HR problem. So that's the importance behind a culture of performance.
Speaker 2:And then, lastly, is this obsession around growing profits and cash flow, and when I come to this one, often I hear people say, well, profits and cash are a byproduct of doing everything else. Right, and I just think that's intellectually lazy, because if, if you don't treat profit and cash as something that's important because that's the fuel that goes back in the engine. If you treat it as a byproduct, it's going to be a byproduct. But if I want to invest in great people in my organization, I need to be profitable with great cash flow so I can be top of market pay, I can provide them the benefits that will attract the best of the best, and so all of those things have to be operating in harmony to really build something elite. So I apologize, that was a long answer, but sometimes no, no, no.
Speaker 1:It's important to get those principles out because it's the core principle about what you do and why you do it. You brought up some very good things and I'm almost certain you probably come across this as you scaled. Good things and I'm almost certain you probably will come across this as you scaled and owners have to, and I've seen this because I work in the investment banking space also is that you come to a point you might need to exit. You're like you know what? This was fun up to this point, but maybe I'm the bottleneck and I need to sell to someone else and you see that a lot, there's a merger, there's an acquisition, maybe that's how. Hey, everybody, I'm glad we got here, we won the game, everybody gets paid out. Here's your golden parachute, if that's where you want to look at it.
Speaker 1:And then the company goes to another phase of its evolution and then you can either be part of the board or you come in to some equity packages and things like that, but you don't have to do the day to day grind Right Before. So I love the way that you you frame your business performance and you frame your business coaching and, what's very, very important, to understand the values and the execution phases that you're getting to. I want to ask you this you know, and because you do a lot of frameworks and you have a lot of formulas that you use, what are your success metrics or your outcomes that you're most proud of, and how do they reflect on your brand promise at next level?
Speaker 2:growth. So I appreciate that. So in scaling up verne harnish, in the strategy section he pulls a lot of strategy from michael porter. One of the concepts that's part of that system uh, that I love is called a one phrase strategy, and the idea is if you can, if you can really distill your strategy down to its core essence and frame it in a short phrase that people can remember and use as a filter for decisions on a daily basis, what would that be?
Speaker 2:And for us, what we really landed on is we call it, experience matters. So it's in a number of different ways. It's the results experience our clients have. It's the experience they have in our work together. It's our experience as seasoned owners, ceos and presidents. So there's lots of different pillars around how we look at that. To sign any contracts, we get paid at the end of the work that we do and only if they feel like it was valuable. So we're the ones who take all the financial risk going into a new relationship. And when we go on this journey with a client, we make it very easy for them to start, but we also make it very easy for them to fire us because they don't have a contract to get out of. So, literally, if I'm working with somebody and they call me today and say that they don't feel like they're getting enough value anymore, we stop charging them, we wish them well and we end the engagement. So what has been a really wonderful outcome is I now have clients that I am in my ninth and 10th year with of consecutive work and they only stay because they're continuing to get value. I'm continuing to evolve and grow with them. Our partners and guides are having similar experiences and we define, you know, in good to great.
Speaker 2:Jim Collins talks about the BHAG. The big, hairy, audacious goal is kind of like that you know five, 10, 20 year, like what's the big thing you're going to accomplish? Well, we, we call it, we call that the summit. So we, we, we use this analogy that growing a business is like climbing a mountain, so we call it the summit. We have, we have two walls in our we've got a hallway in our offices where we have all the logos of the companies we've worked with. There's there's almost 150 logos now on this wall. We've got another wall that we move logos to. That's called our Summit Society. So any company that we work with, when they reach that first summit, we move them to this Summit Society wall. We've now got 19 companies on that wall that we have actually helped hit that first summit.
Speaker 2:And when they go back and think about when we first started working together and they set this big dream of what they wanted to accomplish, like I really didn't think we were going to be able to do it, you know we got there faster, whatever the case may be. So that really, for us, is a metric we look at is the success rate and we have a quarterly pulse where we're meeting quarterly with our clients and a lot of our success metrics are based on their actual metrics. We do surveys, we do a simple net promoter score. So if you're familiar with the net promoter score negative to a positive 100, right. So if you use their calculus, it can be anywhere from negative 100 to a positive 100.
Speaker 2:Our net promoter score right now is an 81. Nice Tesla is in the 70s, netflix is in the 70s, I believe. So anything 60 or higher is considered elite and that's something that's also part of our flywheel, part of our business model, because most of our clients come to us through referral and that's another, I think, big success metric If you're creating raving fans, who are now the ones who are providing you with new business. That's about as perfect as you can create it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think what I'm getting out of this is, first of all, you have skin in the game. Getting out of this, first of all, you have skin in the game. You're not just talking about performance and improvement and next level growth. It's like no, I'm gonna put my time because it's your time and your resources into this and prove to you that we're going to achieve this milestone together, and I will only take compensation as you achieve that goal.
Speaker 1:First of all, you know that's a invest in a, in a person like michael earth. I know it's erath, I I want my mind wants to say earth, but I know it's erath. And but you know, like I said, you know, don't come to me with yeah, maybe this is something I want to do. Like, though, you gotta want to know what you want to do. Then I'll take you to that north star. We're going to get there together and we're going to both enjoy, you know, the values that come from that. You know, I think that's wonderful. We're coming to the end of our session, our podcast, and I want you to tell, first of all, let us know about your book, how to get the book right, how to contact you, but before you give us that? I always ask you because it's important to me remind that performer score. Now you've come to the end of this podcast and you spent a good 30 or 40 minutes on the Follow Brand podcast. How was your experience?
Speaker 2:I would like to do it again. I will start with that. So that's a 10. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it, love it. So now you got to tell us how to get your book, because I want to get a copy of that book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. The book's available on Amazon and Audible Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations. I've also got a website, fiveobsessionscom, so people who've read the book can download resources there as well, and you can also link to the book through that website. I also one of the things I did was I've created an AI clone of myself that's been trained on all of the different things that we teach. Everything I've ever in fact, even this podcast will be transcribed and the clone will be trained on it.
Speaker 2:But the idea with the clone was, if a company is either too small to afford one of us as a partner but wants to implement the tools and the concepts that are part of our approach and they want some additional guidance beyond just reading the book and figuring it out for themselves it's a very inexpensive subscription to the clone they can get additional resources and guidance and insights from that. So the clone can be accessed through the website askmichaelerathcom. That's also in the book, it's mentioned several times and then, lastly, our website, nextlevelgrowthcom. That's where you can meet the team, get a better deep dive into what we do, or on our YouTube channel. We've got a lot of content there as well.
Speaker 1:Man, I want to send a special thanks to the EREF family because this has been wonderful just talking to you, hearing your story, understanding what you are about. I believe in what you're doing and I know that anyone that takes the time to invest their resources into working with you will get tenfold back, because you've done the research, you understand what it takes to achieve the goal and I don't think you're the kind of person like that will say look, if you're ready or you're not ready. You would be very truthful in telling them this is what you need to do to get there, and until you attain these skill sets, you're not going to be able to get to that level. And I think it's important to have authentic conversations with people and understand where they're at and they'll appreciate you more and then they'll come back to you, just like you just said You're going to come back on my show.
Speaker 1:This is going to be wonderful because I'm going to get your book and I'm going to take a look at that and we'll see if we're going to scale our business to the point that we want to get to. So this has been wonderful. I want to encourage your entire audience to tune in to all the episodes of Follow the Brand that's at the number five. That's number five, that's five-star, bdm B for brand D, for development and for masterscom. I want to thank you again for being on the show, michael. Thank you, grant, I had a wonderful time you.