How Implementing EOS Transforms Agencies to Ascend

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is Gray McKenzie from Zenpilot. And this week I have the privilege of bringing on my friend Anne Shetton, who is the co founder CEO of Ascend Strategy and Design. They are a HubSpot diamond and Advanced CMS Implementation certified solutions partner. Ann, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Gray. It's a privilege to be here.

I'm super excited for this conversation. I put out something on LinkedIn about one that talks to great agencies who've implemented EOs. I don't think when I put that out there that I even knew that you had implemented. Yeah, but that's part of the conversation that I want to have. So before we get to eos though, can you give us the profile of Ascend and is it okay to call it Ascend or do you call it Ascend Strategy and Design every time?

We absolutely do not call it Ascend Strategy and Design every time. You know, that would be a tough pill to swallow for everybody. A mouthful. Yep. So Ascend is great. Quick profile. We are a HubSpot diamond tiered partner. We've been around since October of 2015, so we just hit our seven year anniversary. We specialize in HubSpot CMS builds and marketing Hub implementations and retainers. So that's sort of our, our bread and butter right now.

And you came from, you were at a marketing role in house before starting an agency, right?

That's right. And there, there actually is some overlap there. So I started, you know, really, my first real job out of, out of grad school was a marketing director role for a managed services provider, so an IT company. And as time went on, I built out the website for this company. I started doing marketing for this company and the leadership said this is working really well for us. Why don't we try to sell it to our clients? And so that's what ended up happening. So I started building websites and then later on that expanded into more of the inbound offerings like social media marketing, email marketing and the like. And eventually it got to the point where, you know, I started to realize if we were going to be bringing on a higher caliber of client, that we would need to brand ourselves separately from the IT side because, you know, if you're really looking for high quality marketing work, you're not going to go to an IT company, you know, and vice versa. Your high quality IT needs are not going to be sent to your agency because that would be a disaster. So we started Ascend as a division of this company back in 2015. There were you know, some acquisitions, ownership changes that happened in 2020 and I'm really proud to say that me and a couple of other of my colleagues were able to buy out the, the division and we own it outright now.

So that's awesome. Congratulations.

Thank you.

This is kind of a strange question, but that's what I specialize in. So I'm asking anyways, were websites, were you excited to build websites? Is that what you wanted to do or is that just, hey, this is easy, an easier sell on the market? This is what the market is asking for right now.

That's a really good question. Honestly, I would have to say it's the former. I really loved it. And you know, it's funny, when I was the one building the websites, they did not look great, but they performed very well. I'm a marketer by background, so I know messaging, I know SEO, I know the technical nuts and bolts of getting a website up and running. So even though they didn't necessarily look all that great, they performed well. And at the end of the day that's what mattered most to the client. Of course, now of course we're a much more sophisticated agency. We make really good looking websites in addition to being high performing. So you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. But absolutely, I love it. I'm trying to get to the point as you advise Gray to get out of the day to day, but I still love to get in there and tinker around with the technical side of things.

Yeah, well that's leading us into some of the eos conversation and kind of where do you see like are you the visionary, the integrator? We can talk about that in a second. Ascend website though is beautiful. Ascend.com is the URL. Obviously you've put a lot of work into it, but I don't even remember, I don't remember the first time that I saw your website, but I feel like it was probably 2017, 2018, like four or five years ago. And it's always had strong design. Like it has always, the brain has looked really clean from the outside.

That is a testament. No, no, okay. That's a testament to our visionary who is Stephen Carter. He's the other co founder of Ascend and he has a really superior design acumen and definitely brings that side of the, of the, the table to light. So.

Yeah, well, so that this is a transition I was going to make is clean from the outside, like the inside. Let's talk about some of the journey that you've been through. When did you find out about eos? And then what was that? And hey, here's how we're. And what's been. What's been the approach to implementation, I guess is the first question.

Yeah, so I think that like a lot of things, you know, you start to hear about it in several different places and then, you know, over time it just, it becomes this bug in your ear that you think, gosh, I need to look into this more deeply. So one of the places I saw it was the HubSpot Solutions Partner Facebook group. There are a lot of folks talking about EOS even having it on their website, you know, things like that. And then I read a book by Clodagh Higgins. It's like A Happy and Healthy Digital Agency, I think was the name of the book. It's a really quick read, good read. And it talked about how great EOS was. And so between some of those different rumblings, I picked up traction. This was close to the time that we were looking at transitioning over to ownership and so I knew that if we were going to be taking this on, that we needed to build it the right way. And it was transformational. I mean, it really simplified a lot of things for us, helped us prioritize, you know, set a clear vision. Just all, all sorts of really wonderful things have come about as a result of implementing eos.

Have you self implemented it or did you work with an implementer?

We have self implemented. I think I saw that you gray have started working with an implementer recently. I think that's probably something we will do at some point, but so far it's worked out well. To self implement, we use a software called 90io to help us sort of manage all of the efforts in EOs and that's been really helpful to just help us keep tabs on everything. Of course we're Zen pilot fans and ClickUp fans, so we also manage a lot of our day to day, you know, rocks issues and things like that. And ClickUp as well.

Yeah, that, that might actually be one thing that's helpful for folks to go into the 90. You know, we often hear this tension of like, and the PM tools don't have all the EOS specific tools that a 90 or EOS one or one of the other platforms has. But then if we put everything inside those tools, then how do we have our tasks and the to dos that come out of meetings? How do those wind up back in our project manager tool? How do you handle that?

I'm glad you asked. So we actually struggled with That a bit as well. So essentially what we do is it's a bit of a hybrid approach. We track our issues and meetings and notes and things like that in 90. We track our, you know, overall revenue goals and metrics and all of that in 90. But anything that is an action item goes in ClickUp. So if there's something that we need to do, we put it in ClickUp so that, you know, we make sure that. That it gets. It gets done following the rules. That's right.

ClickUp. That doesn't exist. That's great. What, so self implementation. Often you'll find folks are also deviating from some pieces and say, hey, this piece, this didn't really feel like it worked for us. You're laughing already. Is there anything that you feel like, hey, we've put our own spin on this from eos, either to your benefit or to your detriment.

That is a really good question. I think it's more. Not necessarily that we are not. Or that we have deviated more so that we are not leveraging the full EOS toolbox. There's. There's more that we need to do. You know, I think we're answering the eight questions. You know, we have our values, we have our issues list, we, we have our KPIs, all of that. But there are, you know, questions of a process, a measurement, and other things like that that we still have a ways to go to get a better handle on.

Sure, that makes sense. What you mentioned culture there. How has that evolved and like, what's the relationship between that culture, evolution or development and the EOS implementation at the same time?

Yeah, that. So that's one of the things that I think really spoke to me when I read Traction was that there was such a focus on clearly defining your purpose statement, clearly defining your core values, and then, you know, building your team based off of a fit between your core values and basically their capacity to do the job. You know, the right people, right seats mentality. And because of that, you know, it gives you a scorecard. Right. Or checklist A should say where that when you are evaluating a candidate, you basically go down the list of your values and say, okay, they, they meet all of these and they get it, they want it, and they have the capacity to do the job. And just sort of streamlining and simplifying that has made hiring decisions much more clear. So on that side, you know, we're. We're hiring the right people for the right seats. That's, of course, a big part of building a good Culture is just having the right people in place. And then the other aspect of that, of course is the working environment, making sure that we live these values every day and then making sure that we're all aligned and believe in the vision. And so again, that's another aspect of EOS is like, it forces you to set a clear vision, define the path to get there and get the team members on the same page. So, you know, we get the team together every quarter and we go through our, you know, quarterly performance. We go through, okay, how are we measuring up to our annual goals? Are we on track to hit annual revenues? Are we on track to hit, you know, our monthly recurring revenue goals, our project revenue goals, all of that. And we're really transparent about all of that because, you know, we want buy in from the team, we want them to understand where we're trying to go and how we're going to get there. And then, you know, more of the long term piece is looking at, okay, well, where are we going to be in 10 years? Or you know, I love the three year picture too because it's sort of, you can see it, you can really see it happening, but it's far enough away that it still seems exciting and you know, just really being able to see like what, what this is going to look like in a short amount of time, how, how much larger we're going to be, you know, how, what better opportunities we're going to have, how much more valuable we're going to be to our clients, you know, in the marketplace, really helps our team get excited.

So, yeah, so your core values I'm on about page right now. Stay humble, work hard, play hard. People over profit, Quality over quantity. As a total aside, by the way, I often find that when you ask people what question, like how are you screening people out? And I'm gonna lead into that question for you. Screening people and screening people out. In the recruiting process, I find often the, the specific values they reference wind up showing later in their order. So like, quality over quantity is your fifth one. I don't know why that is. I think maybe sometimes we, we pick some easy ones early on and then you get a little bit farther down. It's like, oh, well, what's our, what's our fourth one? What's our fifth one? What's our third? Whatever. And maybe they're ones where, hey, not every, there's a lot more people who wouldn't fit this. So quality or quantity, you know, maybe there's a, there's a way to, there's certainly ways to screen people up. But how do you screen for that in the recruiting process? And then is there one or two of those values where you eliminate more people than other ones or is that not the case? And it's, you know, there's an even distribution over those five.

Sure. So just to clarify, Gray, are you asking how we screen out for all values or just that specific value of quality?

Yeah, for all values. Right. So I'm interviewing for a job at Ascend. What are you asking me or what are you looking for that says, oh, Gray's definitely not a fit to be here?

Or yeah, I would have to say, really the number one is our number one value, which is stay humble. And of course, we evaluate across all of the values. You know, we, we look for work ethic, we look for people that have interests outside of work because we're going to have to spend all this time with them. Like we want to hang out with people that are kind of fun, you know, people over profit, just not in it for the paycheck. Basically we compensate well, but that's where we're here for a bigger purpose and quality over quantity. You know, just looking at the work that they've done and you know, making sure that it's, it's up to snuff, it's, it's top notch. Whether that's writing samples, code, you know, references, things like that. But just to go back to stay humble, you know, that's, that's probably the biggest one that we screen on. And red flags like as, as far as like sort of weeding people out, hints of blame, like, well, I can't do my job because of X, Y and Z. These people are in my way. Like things like that. A lot of self talk. I'm so great because of X, Y, Z. And I understand that you need to do that to a certain extent in a job interview. But I found that there, you know, there's a way to present that in such a way where, you know, you can demonstrate your, your capabilities without bragging. And there's, there's a line there and, you know, if that line is crossed, then they're probably not going to be a good fit. For Ascend. We're very much a collaborative environment. We're the kind of place where, you know, we have each other's back. There's not a lot of shifting blame. There's really no shifting blame among the team or to our clients. So we just want to make sure that we keep that intact in the long haul.

Yeah, how do you, how do those, how do these values play out the day to day? Not necessarily like, so you've got a team of people who exemplify this is how do you keep promoting those values to build the culture that you're trying to build? Is that, you know, a monthly all hands that we have or are we tagging people and celebrating on a weekly basis? What are, what are you doing to promote those values within the current team?

Yeah, so a few different things that we do, we have, we have a weekly standup, very short meeting, just celebrating wins, you know, housekeeping items and just a chance for us to all get together on one zoom and look each other in the eye for a little bit. Every week we use Slack and so we have, we use the, the hey, Taco reward system in Slack where you give each other little taco emojis and those can actually be redeemed for real rewards like a day off or Amazon gift card or lunch, et cetera. And so we really make use of that to give people recognition for their hard work. We're very intentional about our get togethers, whether those are virtual or in person. We have two in person get togethers a year. We have one that's here in our office, our physical office, which only a couple of us actually work in here in South Georgia. But we bring the team down and you know, have sort of a working week here. But we're all in the same place together mixed in with a few fun activities and dinners and things like that. And then we also have an annual retreat. We call it the Hangout. We actually just got back from that last week. We went down to Orlando, we went to Epcot for a day. We, you know, hung out by the pool. We went to topgolf. It was honestly the time of my life. It was, it was a really good time. And I think it's a benefit of having, you know, not heavy overhead costs with having a physical facility is that you're able to take some of that money and put it towards a really cool experience like that.

That, that is awesome. I think hanging Taco also as a, like, as a Slack tool, it's funny how some of those simple, like I think having a mix of both having a really impactful on site, a high emotional intensity get togethers are really important. And I also think having the simple block intact. And hey, we got a weekly setup and we do this weird thing in Slack that looks really strange from the outside, but on the inside it's super fun. It's part of, part of Building culture. That's awesome.

Absolutely. Thanks.

How do you, as you think about the impact of implementing eos, and you're on your journey there, how do you quantify that? Or if, you know, you're telling somebody at inbound next year, hey, here's why this is a great decision. Is it, hey, we started measuring numbers with these consistent scorecards in a way we hadn't done before, and we started all of a sudden hitting it, you know, revenue goals, profit goals, whatever that is. Or is it more on the cultural front? Like, what are the ways that you quantify the impact of EOs?

I think they go hand in hand. Gray. I think, you know, again, if you have the right people, the right culture in place, folks will do good work, and as a result, you'll hit your numbers. But the scorecard has to be there. I mean, you know, I think. I think back to the time before we implemented eos and we had an annual revenue goal every year, but there was no backing that out. You know, it was just like, we. We think we can hit this. And what EOS really brings into play is, you know, the. The quarterly structure, the. The rock structure, and then just breaking each of these pieces down. You know, it's like that analogy with the jar that you, you know, fill it up with rocks and then sand and it's. That kind of thing is just breaking it down into digestible chunks so that we know, okay, if this is our annual revenue goal, this is where we have to get this quarter. If we have to get here this quarter, this is how many clients we need to bring on. If we need to bring on this many clients, then we need to have this many sales meetings a week, you know, or this many proposals are out the door. So it really helped, you know, distill that down into manageable chunks that can give you really a playboat to get there.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I got three questions for you as we wrap up.

Okay.

Two of them are short and silly. Three might require a little more thought. What's the weirdest number on your scorecard? Is there anything that would surprise us?

Weirdest number on this metric?

Measurable, I guess you should say. Right?

I don't know if it's a weird one, but maybe unusual. We have an employee NPS score. So, you know, typically NPS is for client facing stuff, but we do biannual, and we'll probably eventually move into a quarterly employee nps. That's been really helpful to get a gauge on, you know, where we can do better as Leaders how we can improve our work environment for our employees.

That's a great one. You've already given us some tool recommendations. You mentioned 90 ClickUp Slack, Heytaco. Are there any other lesser known tools that are like, oh, these are the Ann Shen or the Ascend Secret, secret tools that you're loving right now?

Yeah, this one is really simple, but I love it. It's called Slick Plan and I use it to build out flowcharts and sites, architecture diagrams. I found that a lot of these tools are just like way more complicated than what I need. And this one's really simple, straightforward. You just plug it in and you're good to go. I really like that tool.

That's awesome. Third one is Looking forward. We're wrapping it. You're here in Q4 of 22 as we're recording this. What's the biggest, you know, you had this three year vision that you're running towards, but what are the priorities in the next 612 months that you're running for for Ascend?

Yeah, you know, one is just maintaining our, our diamond tier status and HubSpot, making sure that we escalate forward into Elite at some point over the next couple of years. So that's, that's been a big push for us. Another big push is, you know, we have a formalized employee onboarding plan, but we want to build that out into more of a full fledged development plan or, you know, offering for our employees. So they're always improving and learning and sort of have a place to go for that. And then I think a lot of agencies are going through this right now too, but. Or maybe it's just at the point where we are in our maturation, but looking to standardize our offerings and make those more packaged up and easier for prospects and clients to understand.

Yeah, that's awesome. All three of those make a lot of sense. Well, this has been super fun. I mentioned the website before. Is there anywhere else that we should point people in to follow you?

I love LinkedIn. I post a few times a week. So yeah, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I always love to connect with other agency owners and employees, so.

Awesome. Well, make sure that is in the show notes here. Thanks so much for joining us on the agency journey.

Yeah, thank you, Gray. It was a pleasure.