Advice for balancing business and personal goals with Anne Shenton

Tiffany Sauder: On this week's coffee over microphones. I have a conversation with Anne Chenin. She first reached out to me actually in 2019 over LinkedIn. after seeing a presentation I had done, to some HubSpot agency owners and just said Tiffany, I'm also an agency owner. I'm also a mom of girls and a few years behind you looking to scale my agency and so it's very special that four years later we actually got to connect.

That's why I love this medium of podcasting is we get to really have real life connections with people that we first only have digital relationships with. So Anne reached out and just said, Hey, Tiffany, I've got some questions about. You know, where I'm at in my business right now and how I'm trying to balance all the things that life has to offer as she's pursuing her version of a life of, and, and so this is Anne and I's conversation where I kind of get into the guest seat and, take Anne's questions.

I hope that you learn a little bit more about my story, but more importantly how you can take pieces of my own journey and help you passionately pursue a life of and in your own life. Listen in.

so I think we're kind of flipping the microphone here. I sometimes do these things where it's called coffee over microphones. I'd love to just get context for

your life so that I have awareness of your stage and kids and, spouse works or doesn't work or kind of what that looks like.

And then, I think we kind of set this up as like, how can I be helpful to you and let's let other people listen in on our conversations. I mean, none of our questions are unique, so if others have the same, let's share them with my audience. So,

Anne Shenton: That sounds great. All right.

so I'm Anne Shenton. I'm the CEO of Ascend Strategy and Design. We are a digital marketing agency and a HubSpot solutions partner. We're based in Valdosta, Georgia, but we have clients all over the United States and Canada, and even a few international clients, and we have employees all up and down the East coast as well.

Tiffany Sauder: How many people do you guys have on staff? Anne?

Anne Shenton: 10.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay.

A fully remote organization.

Anne Shenton: yes. we say we're distributed. We have an office. three of us come in on a regular basis, some folks that come in from time to time, from out of town as well, but we operate fully, remotely.

Tiffany Sauder: Tell me about your fam, how that looks.

Anne Shenton: I've been married to Bill, my husband for 13 years. Next Monday. We have two daughters. Mara is nine and Millie is five. so we're very busy in the thick of that part of our lives. My husband is a nonprofit administrator. so he has a very big job at a very different job.

so we're just much like you just kind of juggling the careers, the families, and trying to make it all work.

Tiffany Sauder: And remind me how you came across me or you confident, or how, how that happened.

I'm really glad you asked me this because I've wanted to tell you for a long time.

Oh,

Anne Shenton: so I came across you, you were speaking at a virtual HubSpot event a long time ago, back in 20 16, 20 17, somewhere in there. And I was a new-ish mom at that time and we had just also started ascend at that time.

And I was really, Just kind of having an internal struggle of, giving my all to being a mom while at the same time giving my all to ascend and, having a career, that is growing and thriving and just felt like I was at a bit of an impasse and I watched you on.

that virtual event, and something that you said really struck me, you said, I'm, I'm a wife and I'm a mother, and I'm also a ceo, and all of those things are important and all of those things can exist together and that's okay. And you probably phrased that much better than I did at that point.

but. It just really struck with me. I think that, maybe I just needed the permission to really fully embrace the career. At the same time, I was embracing being a new mom, and I guess she gave me that permission. Now I look back and I'm like, I don't, I didn't need that. But I'm glad that you were there when you were so,

Tiffany Sauder: Thank you for that. I appreciate the feedback, so I would love to know what did your mom do when you were growing up? Becausefor me, that really informed what I thought my life was gonna look like.

Anne Shenton: my mom was also really invested in her career and she was an administrator and our local technical college, and she rose the ranks, you know, the whole. The time I was growing up and became, second in command of the technical college before she sort of moved into semi-retirement.

And so she was always really busy. don't wanna say always working because she definitely made plenty of time for us as well. But one thing, that stood out to me about my mom was that, you know, she really. Didn't choose either. She was a fantastic mother and is a fantastic mother, and she also had a really strong career.

And my parents got divorced when I was pretty young, and if she had not have had that career, it would've made our lives a lot more difficult because, we needed that income in our family. but she was a really, really strong example. And know, I look back and I'm just really grateful for all the opportunities that I've had and, you know, folks our age have versus when our parents' generation was coming along, she was told that she could be a teacher or a nurse.

When she was in high school and pretty much took that to heart and was like, well, I guess I'll be a teacher because I don't like the side of blood. And went down that road and, didn't really like being a teacher, but thankfully was able to pivot, over to a different career path within the educational realm.

but I think sometimes if she had had the opportunities that I had, like what could have been, she did amazing things, but. You know, she could have probably run a Fortune 500 company if, if were a little different.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. That's such an interesting observation because my mom became a nurse

she really stayed home to raise us, but I. Is very enterprising. Like, always had projects and stuff going on. We weren't her whole world, butmy mom realized later in life, she's like, I don't like sick people. It wasn't blood. She's like, I don't like sick people. So she ended up doing other things. But you're right. I think it was a teacher or a nurse.

Anne Shenton: Yeah. Unfortunately that's, that's the way it was and I guess it paved the way for us to have like some really amazing teachers and nurses when we came along.

Tiffany Sauder: So what's going on in your world right now? What are the best things that are happening right now that maybe are creating some pinch points of life? Cuz not all the hard things come from hard things. Sometimes it comes from business growth and that, and then where are places that maybe we can just have a conversation and there might be things I've done or tried that can be helpful to you.

Anne Shenton: Yeah, that, that all sounds great. we we're fortunate, we've seen steady growth year over year. We have a experience like this, exponential growth or anything like that over the course that I've been running Ascend, but. It's been very manageable and sustainable and I, I really enjoy that.

I think that is a good thing. and, you know, if we ever get on the rocket ship and fly up, we'll deal with that when we get there. But that hasn't been the trajectory we're on. And, and I think that's served us, and especially our employees, well, our clients as well, because, you know, resources aren't getting stretched too thin or anything like that.  we're reaching a point where we're having to sort of rethink how we structure and package our services. we're moving more upmarket with our clients and they have more specialized needs than, we might have, with our clients that are more in the small business space. So just kind of working through that, getting more specialized, if we are gonna niche down, kind of deciding what that would look like, and.

Really asking ourselves kind of some big questions about where we're going. I think that what we have done so far, we're a digital marketing agency. We do a lot of things for a lot of people. Obviously we have to narrow that focus in, if we're gonna continue to grow.

So we're trying to answer those questions and, know, I'd be definitely interested to know if you have encountered, that similar situation and you know, how you went about making those decisions.

Tiffany Sauder: Well, I will encourage you to not. Forget to first ask the question, what do you want out of the business? like as the owner. As the leader, you know, your girls are nine and five, you said right now, and being really thoughtful with your husband about. You know, the stages that are, I mean, right now you're in elementary school.

It's pretty simple. so I have four daughters from 14 to two, so I've got two in middle school and one that's starting high school next year, which feels like a whole nother world. and so I would just encourage you don't answer the business strategy questions without first asking yourself, like, what, what do we really want from this business?

Is it to grow it and in 15 years find somebody to sell it to? Is it to keep it at this size and, really manage client churn and optimize profitability? but like really, really, really be thoughtful about what you want from it, what time you want it to take from you, because those decisions have a really big impact on what you get from it.

I was really slow in, I would say, deciding what I wanted the business to do for me because I was stuck in believing that the best thing I could do was serve the business and Expecting anything from it in return felt really selfish.

And I was like, I'm not selfish so I'm not gonna think about that. But you start creating this reality that you have to live in, that everybody else can leave if they want to, but you can't cuz you're financially tied to it. You've guaranteed loans, you've got line of credit, whatever the things are, but you're financially tied to it in a way that everybody else who works for you isn't.

and once I got really clear on what I wanted, The organization was able to get much more clear about what it could do. You know what I mean? Because if you don't want to run a company that requires you for 65 to 70 hours a week, then there's, there's choices you have to make. If you want to grow, you might have to bring somebody in, like all that kind of stuff.

So I would encourage you to start with what you want your life to look like. I think that you are on the right path. In that deciding who you serve and getting really committed to that so that your sales process, manages towards that, your onboarding process manages towards that. Your frameworks that you establish, manage towards that.

Because with 10 people, and I'm guessing 20 to 40 clients, if there's a bunch of different groupings, it gets really difficult to like, Move towards exceptional and with the force of lots of change. But like AI in particular in our world, I think that we are gonna be asked to be exceptional to like even one step level higher.

because a lot of the rote parts of what it takes to be a marketer is being taken away by ai. Like it's wild.

so I think it's becoming even more important. To specialize in some capacity. Now how niche down you decide to have that be, you get to make that decision. But I think nicheing down is a very powerful choice and allows you to really focus your delivery and sales efforts even more narrowly.

Anne Shenton: That's great. you've mentioned thinking about what you want outta life, and I definitely think about that a lot, but applying that to, how it fits into the business and, structuring it that way for the purpose of, want or, I do have partners as well, so of course their input comes into play also.

Tiffany Sauder: Are they active in the business? Your partners? Okay.

Anne Shenton: Yep.

Tiffany Sauder: How many partners are there?

Anne Shenton: There's three, including

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. So have you guys had a meeting where you sat down and said, okay, in five years, how old are our kids gonna be? How old am I gonna be in 10 years? How old are my kids gonna be? How old am I? Like, what do I want my earning to look like?

Anne Shenton: Yeah. Yeah. We've had those conversations. I think, we're all still trying to figure out That 10 and 15 years, we run on eos, like you do. of course we're in our earlier stages and so we haven't fully fleshed out all of the pieces of that puzzle, but we're working through it.

but yeah, I mean, we definitely take a strategic approach to Ascend, you know, this is where Ascend needs to be in five years.

This is where Ascend needs to be in 10 years. but really factoring in our lives and where we wanna be, I think would be, important as well.

Tiffany Sauder: Well, I can tell you my example of that and maybe it helps you think through your own. My kids are really spread out, which, is actually really relevant to my life. I have a two-year-old and so the idea of like my husband and I having a stage in our lives where we are empty nesters is probably not a thing like.

I'll be 61 when my last one leaves the house, and I'll likely be a grandma by then. Like the life stages are gonna just be like a merry-go-round. Yeah.not gonna be like this 10 year period of time where our kids are in college and we're traveling. It's, I just gonna look like that.

So that's one reality that I was like, okay, so what's that look like? So, one of the dreams that I have, one of the goals, I'm not call it a goal, not a dream, is I live on a bunch of land and so I wanna build a pool house with an amazing office in it that's outside of my house structure because I'm gonna have kids coming home from school.

Literally for 22 more years. So having a place where I can be outside of their space, I can have people meet me here. I cannot meet at Starbucks for coffee, but create a place where I can privately meet with people, but be in the backyard when my kids are coming off. The bus bus became part of my like goals because of the function of we have kids so spread apart.

That's one another is I wanted to be home by three o'clock when my kids were in middle school. there's a lot of care taking when they're young. There's a lot of heart taking when they're older and it's different. I can tell you as a mom to both, they need you differently if you're not the one driving them to practice, you won't see them when they get into middle school if they're in a bunch of stuff.

And being able to be really flexible between like three 30 and 9:00 PM. Was not part of my existence. Three years ago. I was on client calls. I was busy with my time,

Anne Shenton: Right.

Tiffany Sauder: and so I wanted to uncouple myself from the agency to be available to my family, and I also knew, I could see where my husband's career was going.

He travels about 50% of the time right now. That is Fact that also impacts what do I want our home to look like? Either there's lots of care and nannies here all the time, which we still flex into that for sure. Or I was gonna have to be able to figure out how to be present in a way that I never had been before.

so that's what I mean by goals. You know, what do I want my time to look like? when my daughters and wherever she goes to college, I don't want it to be a financial thing for me to be able to go see her whenever I want.

Like those are the things to me that become goals. It's some of it's, I wanna make this much money, but it's more about what it allows me to say yes to without having toWorry about it. So those are the things that motivate me and make me be like, no, I wanna, I have to be able to do this,

Anne Shenton: Yeah. I love that.

I think, we've tried to move in that direction intentionally. If my kids are sick, I get to stay home with them. I can pick them up, you know, as most of the time, whenever I need to. Of course there are client demands, but in our line of work those can be fairly flexible.

So even just like choosing this career path, choosing to be a remote first environment helps with that. But love just, you know, envisioning even farther in the future, like I am scared of middle school so much. for my daughters and because I just had such a terrible time in middle school, and so I'm definitely concerned about that and just, you know, I wanna make sure that I am present for them and, like you mentioned, taking care of their hearts, during that time.

Tiffany Sauder:

I find in middle school, they wanna be with their friends all the time, which is really healthy,

but they still don't have like, good judgment, you know? And so I wanna know like, who are the friends? And I have 'em read their text messages beside me and I need time to be able to be quiet by them in a way when, when they're little.

I can be reading a book, but my brain is like totally processing something else. You know I mean? And so it takes a different speed, like a slower speed. That for me is very hard to like shift down into.

Anne Shenton: You've mentioned, three years ago you were,a lot more involved in your business. And that's something that I'm working towards is, you know, being more, I guess not necessary is, is kind of how I see it. Like how, how can ascend run to day without, everything catching on fire if I'm out or really, you know, if any of our leadership is out.

And so what steps did you take to. Sort of remove yourself as a necessary, day-to-day component,

Tiffany Sauder: Yep. Um, well, I think the fact that you're running on e o s is a huge headstart. It started to become rocks

to make me less important. Like it became a, an annual priority for our executive team to say, this is where Tiffany wants to be. How do we work together to do that? How did

thing

Anne Shenton: your team to support you to do that?

Tiffany Sauder: Well, a couple of things. One is, I mean, I've been doing it for almost 20 years and. And I have people that have been with me for a long time. One was, they actually really like me and want what's best for me. which I think your partners do too, but when I was able to say to them, you guys, when I started this at 25, I.

I told myself that when my kids were in middle school, I was gonna be home. And now my kids are in middle school. My youngest had started middle school and I am so far away from that goal. I need your help to make that true. And I told him, I'm like, my husband is very, very capable. And I knew that we had talked about it.

He needed to know if he could run a really big company and he was getting close to getting his shot to run a really big company. And I was like, it's gonna take travel. Like literally yesterday he told me, babe, I gotta be gone two nights. I had no idea that that was gonna happen. I knew that all this was coming and so I told him, you guys, for our family to be something that I am proud of, I have to have more flex time than I have right now. I've given this place everything I have, I know that we can figure out how to continue to grow and sustain it, but my family needs me differently and. I have told myself I will live a life of and, and my family needs me differently now in the same way that the business needed me differently before  When they were young, I had nannies and my mom lived here practically the first six months every time I had a kid, cuz I'm bad at it, you know, like I had lots of ways that I created capacity so that I could give work everything. And it was at a time where the pendulum needed to be at a different place.

So somehow was just a. A vulnerable explanation of what needed to happen for my family and for me to be happy with this stage in our life that I knew was coming. other was that I had some key leaders that were at a stage in their careers and experience where they needed bigger challenges. Or they were gonna need to leave. And so me stepping outta that President role created a really, very well-timed opportunity for somebody who'd been with me for a long time. He's now runs the agency day-to-day.

And so even though I felt like selfish to step aside, what I realized is like it created an incredible career moment for him to be like, Hey, you're ready for this.

The agency's ready for it. These people believe in you. You are the one to scale it. I was the one to start it, and you're the one to scale it. So it created an amazing opportunity for him. And then the third big epiphany that I had was, are my dreams relevant and can I get them here?

Can I accomplish the things that I dream of in this job, working for these people, being in this culture, pursuing this purpose? And I was like, if I can't show them that I can go get what I've dreamed of. How are they going to believe that I am creating a place that they can get what they dream of? And when I told the agency, I was like, guys, my 25 year old self with no kids and married for six months, started this thing having no idea what life was gonna unpack. And here I am, almost 20 years later, still loving it as much as I did, but knowing with a hundred percent uncertainty that this is what the next phase needs to look like for me, for the agency, for the way that we interact.

And this is my heart's dream. This is part of me creating opportunity and stepping into growth for myself, just like you guys want. And I think the willingness to create change is very scary for organizations that are working well. You know, like let's keep everything exactly as it is.

And it's like, no, sometimes we need to disrupt stuff, even if it's working well. And it was mostly working well with me as both the president and the C E O. It's working better now. Actually, Kyla's doing a better job than I did or could, which is amazing. as I reflected on we're almost a year into the transition being complete.

I was like, it's the proof if we're not getting the stuff we want, if we're not getting exponential opportunity in our own lives, how are our people gonna believe that that's possible for them?

Anne Shenton: All right, so you are on eos of course. And, congratulations on your keynote gig last month, by the way. That's awesome.  so when you started on eos, I know for us it's like, it was one of those things where I read, traction. And I was like, this is what we gotta do, so we're gonna do it. And wanted to do all of the things all at once and did not work. So we took more of a phased approach and, you know, we, we tackled a few things at a time.

I think the, the most important thing for us was getting our, our vision nailed down. you know, getting our VTO outlined like it should be, and then really focusing on people and culture, making sure that we had the right people in the right seats and, you know, then sort of start working on the other areas of Vos.

How did you approach e os? Did you take this kind of phased approach or did you just go all in all at once or did you go in on all areas, but just a little bit all at once? Like what did that look like?

so we hired an implementer. that doesn't have to be the way everybody does it. I follow directions very poorly. So it's better if I have somebody like shouting in my face. So we went all in as it relates to a cultural decision. To fully comply with whatever it was that we were learning.

Like, we are not gonna act like we are smarter than this system because if we were, we would already be doing a good job if we're not, so we need to do the damn thing, you know? But it takes two years to fully implement it. We took that very seriously. So while we went all in on EEO s in the sense of like, this was a cultural decision to say whatever we're learning, we are gonna adopt it a hundred percent. When you go through the six key components and like, you know, mature your way around that circle of things, it does take a couple of years to totally understand how all the pieces fit together to run your L 10 s as crisply as they need to be, to know how to really properly tee up an issue in a way that's not just disguised as a complaint.

The mental rigor that goes into that very simple document that is your v t o. I mean, it took us cycles to get us to a place where we were like, we love it. Like we love it. I think the mistake people make is they get so excited to fill in the blank. They don't really think all the way through what they're deciding.

there were times our implementer would like wanna shake. Me and my leadership team, cuz he's like, you guys are going so slowly, but we're consultants, you know? So our job is to like think about things really completely. And now he would say that was a really important part of his forming as an implementer.

That the completeness by which we thought through what did that mean and how did it connect and how does that work with our business today and did we really believe it? And all that kind of stuff. He now, I would say, would push us less like we can sometimes make easy things hard, but it takes a while to be like, I love every key piece of this.

And sometimes you put a decision on there and you live with it for a couple of quarters and you realize like, this is, this is what I thought I wanted it to be, but it's not. so it can take some cycles for sure. but be disciplined. It's like any place you want change in your life, a small amount of change every single day. ends up being a really big deal, you know, and I think not slipping in and out of like this quarter we're really gonna do good at our L 10 s, and it's like, we're busy, so we're gonna kind of like slack on 'em. Like, Hey, we're back on it. Like, That I think creates organizational exhaustion. instead of being like, no, we're all in on this and I don't care if everybody's tired, we're gonna do it great no matter what.

Yeah, absolutely. That's, heartening to hear, that some of the struggles or maybe challenges that you faced are kind of similar to what we. Faced as well. I think, being in a consultancy, you can take time to answer these questions and sometimes it seems like you're on a wheel running nowhere, but when you do get there, you know, hopefully you're in in the right spot and you don't have to start over again.

So,

Tiffany Sauder: partners all aligned on being on e

Anne Shenton: Yeah, for

Tiffany Sauder: a good spot? Yeah.

Anne Shenton: Yeah. I'm really, really fortunate. They're great partners and we're. Usually, you know, aligned on almost everything, but it's helpful when we're not because you know, you need to have sounding boards and you need to have somebody sometimes pulling you back or pushing you forward in the right direction as well.

One thing I've noticed about you, Tiffany, is that you seem to have pretty high energy levels, and so I'm curious to know like what do you do to to maintain that and make sure that you know you can keep going so that you can fulfill the needs of your family and your team and everything?

Tiffany Sauder: I would say I've gotten really clear about what I need to feel really full and centered. I stopped watching TV a couple years ago and that was life changing. I just don't turn it on and so I go to bed, and I go to bed in pretty good time, like between nine 30 and 10 15. I'm usually in bed.

my kids go to bed. My middle schoolers might be running around upstairs, but I found from like nine 30 to 11 whatever that time was, it was just like really garbage time. I was doing things to just like numb my brain instead of just like sleeping and being whole. So that's one is I actually do sleep.

People look at me and think you to sleep. I was like, I actually do. I probably get six and a half to eight hours a night.

and not afraid of a Saturday nap for an hour, if I need that. I am really disciplined about my movement, about exercise. always lift two times a week and weight training has been a total game changer in the way that I feel in my now 40 year old body.

and so. I'm maniacal about two a week. I really love it when I get four, but when I don't, I don't beat myself up. two is my minimum, and when my husband's traveling, I'll leave my kids home alone. If they miss bus, I'll drive 'em to school.

I just make it happen. And sometimes they're like, well, you needed to pack my lunch. I was like, I mean, just gonna buy it today. I had to work out like, I'm just I'm just that some things don't happen on the mornings. I have to work out and it's really important to me. I'm not like a clean eater compared to some of my friends, but I know what gives my body energy and what doesn't.

And so during the day I'm pretty disciplined about what. It goes in my body at night. Sometimes I eat, I'll eat pizza or something, but I'm pretty thoughtful about my nutrition choices cuz I just feel so different when I eat garbage. So it's pretty simple. Sleep, movement and food.

Anne Shenton: you know, you get in this, Sort of mode when you have really tiny babies and, you lose a lot of sleep and it's been hard for me to kind of come out of that and like establish normal sleep patterns again.

know, I still sort of get up in the middle of the night and wonder where my kids are and what they're doing and, and then I have like a million other thoughts that race in my mind. So just establishing those, Yeah. patterns

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, I get up pretty early cuz I like an hour and a half before my kids wake up of just like my brain gets to get my stuff done, orient to my day, get some movement in, So getting to bed allows me to get up early and I find people don't go to bed and then all kind of dominoes and they like are watching TV or doing a bunch of email right before they go to bed.

And then they're like, can't fall asleep cuz their brain is buzzing and it's like, and then their sleep isn't good and so then they can't get outta bed and then it starts become this dominoes like, I'm tired when I go to bed. That is like the goal

Anne Shenton: Are there any books, I mean, other than traction, you know, we've talked about eos, but are there any other books that you have read that have changed the way you think about leadership or how you run your business?

Tiffany Sauder: the hard thing about hard things.

It is not really a book filled with tips and tricks, but it did make me realize that just because it was hard didn't mean I was doing it wrong. that was like a helpful book for me in that regard. the Great Game of Business, it's a very thick book to read.

that. I wish there was like an executive summary for, but the principle of open book financials that we have done since literally like our first month of business came from the premise. Inside of that, the great game of business has its own I'm gonna use the word operating system.

It's not exactly like e o s, it's more in like the metrics and reporting and open book financials. It has its own stuff. We don't use all the tools. But we do report out to our company monthly how we performed. did the business make money? Are we on plan? Are we behind plan? Like what would bonuses be if we were closing the year out right now? And that has been a very powerful cultural decision for us to empower our people with the same visibility that we have as executives and as owners.

Anne Shenton: So are you fully open, booked? Do you share everything? With employees?

Tiffany Sauder: We don't share with employees what other people make.  It doesn't have like our individual like line items what we make, but they see like comp band, marketing, rent it, professional services, like all that all that kinda stuff.

Anne Shenton: And you've done that from the start, you said?

Yeah.

Wow. does that stand out to job candidates when you're hiring?

Tiffany Sauder: Well, the reason it does is because agencies have traditionally. Had a lot of surprises in them, like surprise, layoffs, they've had some career experience where they got really surprised by ownership. And so it has accidentally, I found, become a very low trust industry between employees and the leadership team. So

Ida said like, well, the quote in there that made me be like, oh, I love this. Is that, Reasonable people given the same information often will make the same decision. But when we have very different sets of information, like the people on the ground think things are great and you know things are not, then they start to get really thrown off by your decision making or what feels like scarcity mindedness or like, why can't we spend this?

Like, I thought we just booked this big client or whatever. But they don't have context of like, yeah, it's a big client, but we still have a $40,000 a month gap, you know? And so I was like, these people are really smart. They are doing marketing for businesses. They don't know business. They need to be taught business. And we can use our own business as a teaching environment for what is between the difference between revenue and expenses. What is a variance be, you know, between what that was gonna happen, what actually did? Why should we spend $50,000 on this new marketing idea and here's what we think will happen, like why shouldn't we?

And so we bring them into, Our thinking and our processing. and it has created a really high trust environment, as a result.

So, So

I don't know if it would be valuable to your team, but I think it's a real specific thing about our culture that, Just continues to lean into what's a very transparent culture.

ultimately this is our job, is to make sure the business is going concern, you know, can like, continue on and on and on and on, and making money is our leadership imperative and we wanna make sure that our organization understands, like, are we doing a good job at that or a bad job at that?

Anne Shenton: I imagine, your agency's been around for 17 years. There have been times when those numbers have not looked good. So how did you navigate those types of conversations? Like, what did you do to sort of ease your employee's minds as you underwent, times that were not as, as profitable?

Tiffany Sauder: Well, the uncomfortable part is that the truth is being exposed and the leadership team like doesn't wanna say it like, Hey guys, if we don't turn this around in the next two months, we will have to make staffing changes. People are like terrified to say that what if everybody quits? It's like they might, but you at least told them this is what has to happen or we're gonna have to make different choices.

And there have been times we've had to say that where like, these are the six things that we're doing to fill the gap. These are the things that we have underway. We think it's likely that we're gonna get there, but there's been times we've had to do layoffs and it sucked, but people were not

not surprised.

And, it is hard to be honest when things are not the story you want them to be. but there's a lot of trust that is created when you said, this is where we are. If we can't fix, this is what's gonna happen. It's what happened, and then then back to work. You know what I mean? So,

Anne Shenton: Yeah. The fear of the unknown is almost always worse.

Tiffany Sauder: Totally. even on the upside, like if you're making a lot of money, they don't know that, like, 40% of every dollar we make goes to the government. they think like, I don't know, what are you making, like $6 million a year or something,

Anne Shenton: And how much of that money has to go back into the business too, and yeah, just all, all kinds of stuff, so

Tiffany Sauder: we're crushing it, they should feel like they're crushing it too.

this is where EOS starts to become. Once you start really getting into the scorecards and really getting into them having like levers over the ability to drive profitability inside of projects and resourcing, they start to be really motivated to be like, Hey, I don't think we need to hire another fte.

Like, I think we can get that done if we do these things. And they start to solve with you totally differently when they understand the financial ramifications of what's happening. And it's great.

Anne Shenton: Well, they start looking at things like you look at it,

Tiffany Sauder: Totally.

How about you, Anne? How do you, how do you take care of yourself? How do you find, you know, what do you enjoy? Have you found space for that or are you momming working? Wifeing so much that you've kind of don't have that right now?

Anne Shenton: yeah, I think I've definitely gone through periods where I've had very little of that and. That doesn't serve anybody, at least of all me. But, I have been more intentional. About that space. So I go to the gym, you know, three times a week, at least in the mornings. I have to get up really early to do it.

I don't like getting up that early, but you know, it, I feel a lot better when I do. I attempt to play really bad guitar sometimes during the evenings. It's just sort of an outlet for until my kids start screaming at me to stop. And then, um, just spending time in general with my kids. My, my husband and I went on a date on Friday night for the first time in probably months, and it was just so nice and so much needed.

so yeah, I think like the more I, I lean into ascend and the more ascend grows, the more I realize like I have to fill my cup or else there's not gonna be anything here. give. So that was a very important thing for me to realize My dad passed away last year, and so I think that was like, it was a turning point for me to kind of reprioritize everything going on my life and realizing, you know, life is short.

My dad did a really good job of devoting a lot of time to me and his family. so just making sure that. You know, I made the space that and I continued to make the spaceto do that for my kids.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, nobody's gonna tell you to go home you're, you know, the leader. I had to learn that the hard way, for sure.

Anne Shenton: Yeah. nobody's going to say, I wish you would've worked more,

you know, when you're on your deathbed  either. So it's, yeah.

Tiffany Sauder: Did you lose your dad unexpectedly or was it something you knew was close?

Anne Shenton: it was over the course of a few months, so we had time, but you know, it was a very harrowing

Tiffany Sauder: Mm. My goodness. I'm

Anne Shenton: yeah. hear that. Thank you.

Tiffany Sauder: is there anything else that you had hoped to get out outta this conversation, Anne?

Anne Shenton: No, I I've learned more than I thought I would coming into the conversation and we talked about some things that I, I didn't expect us to talk about, which I really enjoyed, and I just really appreciate your time.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. Good. Well, I appreciate you reaching out and, love to hear of other, you know, moms trying to figure out how to, what I call, pursue a life of and where you're doing all the things. So,

Definitely encourage you in your journey and I'm certainly here as a resource if you need anything, anything, so feel free to reach out.

Anne Shenton: Awesome. I really appreciate it. Thank you

Tiffany Sauder: you're welcome You're welcome Anne.

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