With more than 15 years’ experience in executive and human resources consulting roles, Julie Ironside Jacobs delivers proven operational and business expertise and emotional intelligence and rigor to inform strategy, improve culture, and drive productivity and profitability.
WHY IRONSIDE?
As Ironside’s founder and principal, Julie Ironside Jacobs approaches clients with a keen business acumen and a real-life understanding of Family Business dynamics as well as large family dynamics. She is knowledgeable, honest, direct, and thoughtful.
Julie listens closely to her clients and works to understand their unique marketplace opportunities as well as family nuances and challenges. At the same time, she acts as an impartial champion for the whole entity, not any one faction.
Family business is about results and relationships. So is Julie.
WHY FAMILY BUSINESS?
Research shows that, as of March 2023, Family Business creates 78% of new American jobs and employs 60% of workers in the United States. Family business is 64% of the national GDP.
As importantly, Family Business operates with values and long-term thinking that align with Ironside’s values and goals. Having worked with 100+ Family Businesses in the Midwest/Great Lakes region throughout her career, Julie shares the belief that success is earned; so do her clients.
Julie chooses to work exclusively with Family Businesses because they go beyond that basic tenant: Family Businesses for profitability, they also invest in their communities. Shareholders and employees share time, talent, and treasures within the communities where they live.
CONSULTING SERVICES
TESTIMONIALS
"With our organization, there is tangible, hard data from when we started with Julie until now -- all of our culture numbers have improved, and they're better every year. We wouldn’t have grown the way we grew without her. All operations are stronger because of Julie: she’s a dynamic, executive leader who can facilitate the creation of mission, vision and values for companies, working with leadership teams, growth plans, and culture initiatives. She has a track record in each of those areas, leaving them measurably better than they were before she started."
- Michael Sicher | Managing Partner, Identiti
"She is upbeat and personal, and personable – just the right balance of extrovert and introvert. She knows how to engage and where, and the most important part of the recipe is her ability to read people. Julie’s EQ is very advanced: no matter what personality you put her with, she knows how to interact and get the effect she wants.”
- Damon Marano | President, Anthony Marano Company
"Julie is one of those people who put a lot of value on your time, but also on her time. She kind of forces you to be efficient. Anybody who hires her and allows her to do what only she does best will see value come back to them, probably 10-fold. She relies on systems and processes, so it all happens from within. We were looking to improve our existing practices, and we could not have done it without Julie. She provided the insight and expertise that we were looking for in the areas of development and training of team members, as well as the onboarding initiative. Since we have implemented many of these new tools and processes, we have received exceptional feedback. All these enhancements were practical, useful, and easy to put into action.”
- Mike Meagher | President, McHugh Construction
"Working with Ironside helped us become a much more efficient and strategic company in many areas. Our Executive Meetings went from being unproductive and long, to meetings that are agenda driven, efficient and effective. We are now able to make key decisions in a timely manner, and we reduced the time of the meetings by 30 minutes! Julie was also instrumental in helping us have the hard conversations within meetings and our performance management process. She has shown us how to successfully coach people and hold them accountable for their goals, progress, and outcomes.”
- Ray Cisco | COO, McHugh Construction
"Julie’s organizational skills are great, meaning you can always count on her giving you quality time, and she’ll tailor it to your needs to make it possible for the organization to uphold standards, rigor, goals, formal review processes – to embrace them and do it consistently.”
- Gary Chiapetta | CEO, Kaleidoscope
"We have had the distinct privilege of working with Ironside & Associates for nearly four years. Our engagement with Julie Jacobs and the team during this period has been very diverse in scope and couldn't have taken place at a more pivotal period in our company's history. In 2019, we set out lofty goals to solidify company growth and sustainability. While the initiatives will continue to evolve, I'm confident that we would not be in the same position of strength we find ourselves in today without Julie's support and guidance.”
- Zack Sicher, Owner | Managing Partner, Identiti
"Julie Jacobs understands people. Over the last four years with our company, she has adroitly adjusted to many individual personalities and facilitated powerful discussions between us. She shows compassion to those she coaches while inspiring them to best serve the company. She has enthusiastically embraced each new challenge that has come with our rapidly-growing (and changing) small business, and has played a vital role in the restructuring of our company. In short, Julie makes the whole of an organization greater than the sum of its parts. We are grateful to call Julie a member of the team, as she has made us better.”
- Christian Murphy | Executive Director & Owner, Catharsis Productions
“Julie is a great teammate. She is a joy to work with, and she delivers outstanding results. I have been fortunate to have worked with terrific HR talent at companies such as Clorox, Pepsi, and SC Johnson, and Julie Jacobs is as good as it gets. She is a strategic business partner who ventures beyond the HR silo to understand the entire business. She leads her team with vision and an admirable sense of accountability to deliver talent acquisition, development, and retention strategies and plans that fuel both organizational and bottom line growth. During our time together at ETA hand2mind, our team embarked on a significant cultural transformation, and Julie was a vital leader of the journey and our ultimate success.”
- Jude Rake | Founder & Principal, JDR Growth Partners
“Our team needed a new skill set. Julie recognized that right away. She brings a level of expertise that is unmatched. She’s a trusted partner, unflappable under stress, and one of our secret weapons. She has helped facilitate change that would have taken us much longer to achieve on our own. She has helped align our team to deliver on our promise of sustainable profitability while enabling physician partners to maintain clinical autonomy and financial control.”
- Chris Bishop | CEO, Veterinary Innovative Partners