Removing the Masks: Tim Perdion’s Journey through Personal Challenges to Purpose-Driven Leadership

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Tim Perdian, director of practice management and service delivery technology at ascend partner services. Founded in 2023 and based in Arlington, Virginia ascend is reshaping the accounting industry.

by empowering entrepreneurial CPA firms to grow while staying independent. Backed by Alpine investors and already recognized as a top 25 firm by accounting today, Ascend provides the resources, leadership systems and capital firms need to thrive without sacrificing personal service. Tim brings over three decades of experience across global accounting firms.

a top 25 US bank and a Fortune 500 manufacturer. He’s led operations, risk and technology teams, as well as large scale tech transformations, always focused on increasing impact, improving processes and leading with authenticity. His leadership approach combines strategic clarity, operational rigor and emotional depth, blending technical precision with a deeply human centered philosophy.

Tim Perdion (01:18)
Thank

Anthony Codispoti (01:25)
He’s a certified PMP and a former CESA and CPA. But what sets Tim apart is his passion for building systems that serve people, not the other way around. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

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All right, back to our guest today, Director of Practice Management and Service Delivery Technology of Ascend Partner Services, Tim Perdian. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Tim Perdion (02:32)
Well, thanks for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (02:36)
So Tim, you worked for some big firms early on in your career. KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, household names, everybody knows. Initially you were doing tax and audit work and at some point made the shift more into IT audit and infrastructure. Talk about how that change came about.

Tim Perdion (02:55)
Yeah, so early in my career, I started out at Pricewaterhouse as an auditor. And what I found was I had an interest in technology. And this was… ⁓

in the early 90s. So it was a time where computers were just becoming more significant in the work force in terms of the way they were used for everyday use. So I had an opportunity to transition into something that blended some of the business experience I had with the technology. And it really was an emphasis on how to help companies get more value out of their use of technology. So that

was an interest that I had from back in college and when I worked at Pricewaterhouse, it kind of manifested into an opportunity to make that transition in the workplace.

Anthony Codispoti (03:51)
Okay, lots of really incredible stops along the way. Maybe pick one that was most formidable for you before Ascend and talk about how that experience has continued to influence your approach to work today.

Tim Perdion (04:06)
Yeah, so I think all the experience through the time when I spent, spent 10 years at Goodyear, ⁓ that all prepared me. But the experience I had at Seabiz most recently before joining Ascend, I think was ⁓ probably the most instrumental. And I think it was coinciding with like a lot of my own journey and maturity in life and, you know, things outside of the workplace.

But it really helped me truly tap into ⁓ relationships and the power of relationships and the importance of empathy in terms of change. where we were driving a lot of change, I could see that not everybody had the same orientation to change. And so I learned a lot on

you know, about people and people’s adaptability. So I think those were some of the things that it was not just about the work, but about the people and not about just getting stuff done, but getting stuff done in a way that it was impactful on the way people did their jobs and on the overall organization.

Anthony Codispoti (05:22)
Is there maybe a specific story that encapsulates how you kick up these lessons?

Tim Perdion (05:28)
Yeah.

So one of the things that we did is my team was responsible for building some analytics capabilities. Just think about it as like dashboards of ⁓ company performance. could slice and dice the performance by, you know, office, by service line, all the different ways we might want to look at the business. And we were rolling this out to a very diverse group of

of practitioners, mostly accountants. And I thought, okay, people would embrace this. People would be excited about this. It’s gonna give them access to information that they didn’t previously had, or if they did, it would have taken a lot of time for them to pull together their own data through Excel and all that.

Some people loved it and there’s a lot of people that were afraid of it and didn’t embrace it. So like my logical thinking was like, well, why wouldn’t people want to embrace this? But what it taught me or what it really illuminated is that there’s a spectrum of people in their comfort level for new things.

And we had people who were just give it to me, I’ll figure it out. And there were people who didn’t want to click on something because they thought they would break it or they just, said, I need training. So it led me to like really again, have empathy for people and recognition that not everybody thinks the same and not everybody’s orientation for new things is the same either.

Anthony Codispoti (06:51)
Yeah.

And so you have to find yourself in a position where you can meet people where they are.

Tim Perdion (07:13)
meet people where they’re at. And that was like the most significant thing, meet people where they’re at and have patience and bring them along because you need to bring them along versus dragging them along. And so it’s meeting people where they’re at and recognizing that it’s better for all of us if people come along versus if we leave people behind.

Anthony Codispoti (07:38)
So I want to spend a bulk of our time talking about what you guys are doing at Ascend because the model is pretty interesting. So how did the opportunity to join Ascend come about?

Tim Perdion (07:49)
So I was contacted via LinkedIn by one of the recruiters and this was a little bit over a year ago. And ⁓ the model was pretty similar to what Seibiz was doing in terms of acquiring accounting firms and Seibiz would ⁓ put them together. So they were part of Seibiz, but Ascend is buying them and aggregating them. But the

Companies the firms that join a send they keep their brand they keep their culture. So we have a stay independent and ascend together kind of ⁓ tagline so ⁓

industry I’m very familiar with, work I’m very ⁓ familiar with, but in a different business model with like we’ve got 20 firms today and we’re forecasted to have 50 by the end of 2028. So it’s very deliberate and intentional model of aggregating firms.

that fit a particular profile that we’re looking for. And so it’s a very exciting business to be part of, ⁓ very talented people, people who are very ambitious and motivated, ⁓ who’ve been developed in kind of a private equity world and understanding that. And then you kind of mash that together with the accounting industry, which the…

They could be from two different worlds, private equity and then accounting industry. But it’s a beautiful kind of combination. And what I really love about Ascend is that it’s a very people oriented, people first type of organization, which sometimes we have to explain to firms that we’ve got to get them out of the stereotypical way of thinking about private equity.

Anthony Codispoti (09:47)
So I’d like to better understand your approach here. Obviously in a private equity setting, you’re looking for efficiencies of scale and you’re looking to be able to apply your expertise to help these existing firms grow. ⁓ I think I see the value in maintaining each of the individual brands, right? Because they’re known locally, you know.

not always, but a lot of accounting firms tend to have the basic clients in a local geographic ⁓ region. ⁓ But talk to me more about, first let’s go through what the profile is that you’re looking for. Who is an accounting firm that kind of fits your mold?

Tim Perdion (10:32)
It’s a firm that’s first of all got an entrepreneurial mindset. So they’re looking to grow, they’re looking to accelerate their growth and ⁓ looking for a partner for an investment, an engine to invest so that they can accelerate their growth versus a firm that’s looking to sell as an exit strategy.

Anthony Codispoti (10:59)
How do you help firms grow?

Tim Perdion (11:04)
Well, the way Ascend approaches it is we have what we call an ⁓ Ascend proven process.

And that process is pretty intentional where we take the leader of the firm and we turn them into a CEO. Often in accounting firms, the managing partner might have a big book of business, lot of clients that they serve. Our desire is for them to have no clients and for their main client to be the firm that they operate. So they’re the CEO. We give them training for that. We also identify ⁓ a chief growth officer.

and we place that professional into the environment and that person is intended to help them with operational and growth objectives so that they can again look at ways in which they can amplify and accelerate their growth.

We also give them access to offshore resources. We have a wholly owned offshore center where they can get low cost, lower cost resources to help them get better leverage in their business. And often firms that we look for are in the 10 to 40 million dollar range and they may not have had access to those kinds of resources in the past.

Anthony Codispoti (12:22)
That makes a lot of sense. I was talking to my accountant recently and he’s struggling to find junior accountants. He’s got more than enough business. ⁓ He just doesn’t have the throughput to take all of it on. On ⁓ my business side, I’ve been using some outsourced resources since early 2000s. I mentioned that idea to him and it seemed kind of a little, I don’t know, scary or foreign.

with you guys, it sounds like you’ve got sort of your own established team. So it’s easier for folks to plug into it’s sort of less ⁓ unknown that might be frightening to

Tim Perdion (13:00)
So for firms that haven’t done it before, might.

they might experience some of the same things you described from your accountant, some reservations about how it works and like, ⁓ can I trust it? But what’s nice is that when you have a model that’s working and others have gone before you, can see that it’s proven and it’s working and people can trust it. They’re good partners. ⁓ What’s interesting is we’ve sent some of our firms, we’ve sent some of their folks to India, to the place where they get to actually meet ⁓

people that will be kind of supporting them. And you make that connection and now we see how real this is. It’s not so now I have a connection with like who these people are and you know, and their desire to help our clients just as much as we want to. So the model ⁓ does take some adjustment for firms that maybe haven’t done that before. But the fact is that we have a model that’s working and proven really helps accelerate people’s comfort level.

Anthony Codispoti (14:03)
So talk to me about some of the big growth levers that you’re able to help folks pull because that’s part of what’s going on here. Right. They want to bring they want to be part of the ascend family because they want to experience that growth. You want them part of the family so you can help them grow. How do you do that.

Tim Perdion (14:16)
Yeah,

yeah. Well, one other thing that we do is we give them access to capital so that they can buy additional firms in their market. Right. So those firms. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (14:28)
so you’re not the only one doing the acquisition.

The firm that you’ve just acquired, you’re giving them the resources now to do acquisitions locally too. that’s interesting.

Tim Perdion (14:38)
Yep. And

those acquisitions become part of that firm. now those are like add, we call them add-ons. They’re added onto that firm. So there’s that growth, but there’s ⁓ organic growth and looking at ways in which we can. ⁓

amplify the business development efforts, looking at ways in which we can expand service offerings, looking at ways in which we can do more cross-selling. One of the big initiatives we have right now is just getting to know our customers in a really deep way. The more we know contextually about what’s going on in our clients’ businesses and our clients’ lives, we now can bring to them service offerings that might match what

is going on in terms of business events that they have going on. So there’s a client-centric approach to help these firms really

get a little bit more intimate with their client base to bring them services that sometimes sell themselves. Because if I have an event, I have to have certain services as a result of that event. there’s a bunch of different levers, but it’s all around trying to help them become ⁓ more trusted advisors to their clients versus just like the accountant that does maybe an annual tax return.

Anthony Codispoti (16:00)
Okay, that was going to be my question. I’d like to better understand the services that you guys are providing. It sounds like it’s more than just bookkeeping and accounting and sort of prepping the returns for the end of the year. You guys are doing more consulting things, advising on tax strategies or &A things. Tell me more.

Tim Perdion (16:14)
Thank

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. So there’s all those things ⁓ in terms of advising on business transactions that might be going on in a ⁓ client’s business. ⁓ Also ⁓ looking at ⁓

if a client’s looking maybe to sell their business ⁓ or if there’s succession things going on. So there’s a lot of tax strategy, tax planning, ⁓ looking at other types of things where you might bring specialty tax services or state and local tax or international tax or.

research and development credits and more diverse services that clients might need. So that’s why we want to understand a bit more broadly about what’s going on in a client’s ecosystem, in their world, so to speak, in order to determine what other types of strategic tax services they may need.

Anthony Codispoti (17:16)
The firms that you’re acquiring, are they specialized in particular industries? Like, do you find that their clients are of a certain revenue size, or is this just like all over the board?

Tim Perdion (17:32)
Predominantly in the small to medium business market. So we don’t have firms that we acquire that are doing large public company work. It’s mostly in the small to mid-range business.

Anthony Codispoti (17:50)
How do you define small to midrange?

Tim Perdion (17:54)
individuals, family office type stuff would be on the small side to, you know, 100, 250 person firm, people, businesses and stuff like that. So ⁓ I’m not sure exactly what the top end would be in terms of that size. But one of the things that we do have is we have across our portfolio, we have firms that are probably 10 million in revenue.

up to firms that are 50 million in revenue. We have firms that are in small markets and we have firms that are in major markets. So it’s diverse in terms of not only the size of the firms that we have in our portfolio, but also there’s a bit of diversity too in the clients that they serve and the geographies that they operate in.

Anthony Codispoti (18:48)
Tell us more specifically what your role is there,

Tim Perdion (18:51)
Yeah.

So my role is practice management and service delivery technology leader is to work with the firms as they come into our environment to integrate them into our environment from a, you know, application standpoint. So one thing that we focus on is for accountants, time and billing is a major system. It’s like the backbone of how they track the work they do.

We now have all of our firms onto a standardized type of instance of a particular software. And so everybody has, let’s call it service categories. Here’s the categories of the way we catalog our services. And everybody that would come to us would have their own catalog of services in what they call them. We map.

there’s two R so that we have a standard set of categories and subcategories so that when we roll all this up, we can determine how much of the different kinds of work we’re doing across all of the portfolio companies. ⁓ We also… ⁓

are trying to bring solutions to them that help accelerate performance of certain processes that in the past maybe had been highly manual or labor intensive. And one of them, would, is an example is engagement letters. So the letter of the work that we will do for you as a client, we call that an engagement letter, kind of a statement of work. Here’s the services we’ll provide. Here’s the range of cost it’ll be. And on an annual basis, we have to send those out.

to all of our clients. And that’s a really labor intensive process, highly manual. We’re now working with a firm that ⁓ helps accelerate that through a solution that basically has all the templates accessible, the client information accessible, and through a pretty efficient process, we can do something in hours that used to take weeks.

Anthony Codispoti (21:01)
Wow. Are you guys layering in AI tech much on what you’re doing yet?

Tim Perdion (21:07)
We’ve also invested in, we have

20 people today and we’re looking to grow to possibly 30 and their focus is on product development, really around AI solutions that interact with the systems that we have. So trying to use AI to take… ⁓

to make more efficient traditional processes. So if you take 40 % of the effort it takes to do a tax return, if you take that and reduce that by 40%, it frees up resources to do what we would say more of that strategic work, more of that trusted advisor work. So you can get economies of scale through the AI. And so we’re making big bets on how AI will transform the way work happens in the accounting

industry.

Anthony Codispoti (22:05)
Does that fall under your umbrella that AI work?

Tim Perdion (22:07)
No, there’s a team that’s ⁓ kind of shoulder to shoulder with us. We partner and interact with them quite a bit. They leverage a lot of the systems and integrate with the systems that we manage. For instance, like our tax preparation software, they’re building stuff that interacts, operates with that, works through the APIs in the tax software. So we collaborate with them a lot, but they’re in a parallel part of the organization.

Anthony Codispoti (22:35)
So you already mentioned, made reference to the type of growth that you’re expecting in the next few years. Remind me of the numbers. You’re at 20 acquisitions to date and you’re targeting 50 within the next three years?

Tim Perdion (22:48)
Yeah, by

the end of 28, I think our forecast is to have 50 firms.

Anthony Codispoti (22:53)
that’s picking up speed. You guys are sort of growing the team that’s kind of out there doing the due diligence and you know, hitting the street looking for the deals.

Tim Perdion (23:03)
Yeah, yep. like ascend ⁓ itself has about 90 people in a year ago. It was like half that. So there’s been a big part of the growth and it’s in the deal team. It’s in finance team that kind of takes over finance operations for these firms, ⁓ people operations. So we offer a lot of HR.

talent to the firms to help accelerate their ability to recruit resources. ⁓ And so then from a technology and from a ⁓ AI perspective, those are the other parts of the send and it’s really rapidly grown. ⁓ Again, scaling up to support all of what it takes to integrate all of these firms at the pace in which we’re buying them.

Anthony Codispoti (23:52)
Tim, I think I’m gonna skip ahead to a question that I typically, excuse me, leave for a little bit later in the interview, because I think it’s gonna help flesh out ⁓ some of your superpowers and your positive characteristics of your personality. I would like to explore a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life and kind of walk through some of the lessons that you’ve learned in the process.

Tim Perdion (24:20)
Yeah. So ⁓ probably the driving force ⁓ of the lessons and the challenge was rooted in my identity. So I’m adopted. when I was 10 years ago in my mid 40s, I met both of my biological parents.

shifted my view of myself and my identity and maybe illuminated more of the unknown aspects of how I became who I was and all of that.

And it really ⁓ led me into an inward journey of self-discovery, personal growth, spiritual awakening. And I think what I went from like just trying to do work, maybe wearing masks and just trying to work hard and maybe hiding any kind of vulnerability to embracing the…

other part of my life, the inner part of my life. And it really helped me not only get to know myself better, it helped me appreciate other people more as well. So it was a shift and it really helped me cultivate empathy. helped me recognize, and we talked a little bit earlier about meeting people where they’re at. Well, I met myself where I was at in a place where it was a little bit dark at times and

So it helped me recognize that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness, that asking for help and acknowledging different challenges is the way to grow versus hiding them. so like growing up. ⁓

I learned if there’s challenges, we just kind of deal with them and we just try to do what we can to overcome them. We don’t talk about them. So secrets was a bit of a theme. And so when some secrets that had been part of my life, like where did I come from, became…

Anthony Codispoti (26:37)
So

you didn’t find out until your mid 40s that you were adopted.

Tim Perdion (26:41)
I knew

I was adopted. just, what I would have said is like, I don’t know where I get like some of my makeup, my character.

who I am, what my interests, personality traits and all that. Because in the world where I was raised, like I didn’t see anybody that like had the same drive or same makeup as I did. And so when I met both of my biological parents, I got answers like, okay. You know, you know, one thing that was funny when I first met my mother, she’s like, if competitive was a gene, you got to double dose, right? Both her and my

Anthony Codispoti (26:52)
some of your personality traits, obviously.

Tim Perdion (27:21)
biological

father were very competitive people. They were both lawyers and you know so I got to understand a little bit more of that kind of nature part of nature versus nurture.

Anthony Codispoti (27:36)
Say more about the secrets. said secrets were kind of a big part of your makeup.

Tim Perdion (27:40)
Yeah.

So if you’re adopted, your origin is a secret. So the adoption was sealed. So the identity, the origin, the people, I had a

birth certificate that didn’t have any evidence of other people who were my biological parents. So that was a secret. you know, in my family that raised me, there were things that we didn’t talk about that were secrets. you know, for example, like my dad had a twin brother who was, ⁓ was, was gay, had a life partner who

was my godfather and so all throughout my childhood and teen years I kind of sensed there was something but we didn’t talk about this and they passed away when I was 18 and 20 and they passed away from HIV AIDS. We didn’t talk about it. So like I would have been the person who kind of always knew the truth but somehow

we weren’t comfortable talking about those types of things. So, ⁓ the metaphor for my life seemed to be like, why is it that we’re not talking about the thing that like seems very clear and evident to me? And, you know, if I fast forward through a lot of other challenging situations, that became something where I would say leads to a superpower of discernment where

Anthony Codispoti (29:19)
Yeah.

Tim Perdion (29:19)
can

kind of read ⁓ body language, read like facial expressions, can just kind of sense things that other people may not pick up on. Because what I probably did growing up was figuring out what do I need to do to fit in? It was like a chameleon. Like what do need to do in any environment to fit in and belong? Because what…

it seemed like was I had to be a particular way. So I was living someone else’s idea of what I should be. And so like that led to wearing masks that look led to like not talking about struggles or challenges, or that led to just trying to like hold that beach ball under the water. And, know, at times the beach ball can slip. So what

happened in my life then was like my relationship with my emotions became more intimate and mostly anger. You know, and so like when anger started coming out it, you know, obviously anger that’s directed outward can be healthy unless it’s directed at people. And so like the people around me might have experienced ⁓

the shrapnel, so to speak, of some of that. And so I got some help later as I ⁓ wrestled with this. I got some help. asked for help and I stepped away from ⁓ work for a bit of time to work on really, truly getting intimate with all of what I would call childhood trauma and different types of adverse situations that I wasn’t

mature enough at the time to handle these things. And so, you know, ⁓ it became something that like, ⁓ yeah, really just led to better self awareness. And I think, you know, I ended up diving into

personal growth stuff and learning became a much more spiritual person and understanding, you know, the faith component of spirituality and all of that. And it just accelerated my ability to meet people where they’re at, to see where people might be struggling, to see and read situations at work where somebody might not be showing up their best.

⁓ And so, you know, kind of having conversations with people about, is everything okay? And just kind of being more plugged into the whole person ⁓ because…

You’ve got people who are taking care of elderly parents. You’ve got people who’ve lost loved ones. You’ve got people who’ve experienced divorce, who going through hardships and they come to work and try to make it seem like everything’s okay. And sometimes that’s just too much to ask of somebody. And so, you know, when you’re plugged into and working shoulder to shoulder with people that are going through things, you know, ⁓ nobody ever asked me if I was okay. I kind of wish they would have.

So I’ve really kind of found myself relating to people who might be struggling with things in a much more authentic way.

Anthony Codispoti (32:46)
So let see if I can sort of wrap my arms around this. Obviously, you went through some stuff when you were younger. ⁓ Nobody’s asking you if you’re OK. You didn’t really have the tools or the mechanisms to deal with some of this trauma that’s occurring. So what happens with a lot of folks when we’re not taught those tools, we take those emotions, we take those experiences, and we stuff them down inside. And ⁓ anybody who’s sort of been on that path knows that that only works for so long.

Tim Perdion (33:08)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (33:14)
That stuff turns into poison and it festers. you know, when it, when it comes out, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s toxic. It’s ugly. ⁓ and as this stuff started coming up, you recognize that I got to deal with this. And so you had the courage to kind of raise your hand and say, I need some help. I need to step away from my work. I need to, I need to work on myself right now and step away from my job. You’ve got that help.

Tim Perdion (33:17)
Yeah.

Talk soon.

Anthony Codispoti (33:42)
I’d be curious to hear more about what that format was and how it helped you. But through that and through finding your faith, ⁓ you became more in tune with your own emotions, with your own ⁓ psychological makeup. And as you were able to explore that and better understand it, now your antenna are sort of tuned.

so that you can better recognize in other people when maybe they’re going through some hard things that they need a helping hand.

Tim Perdion (34:14)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:16)
And so what did that help look like for you and how hard was it for you to raise your hand and ask for it? Because a lot of people get stuck in that part of the cycle.

Tim Perdion (34:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it was, it looked like I was ⁓ on a family vacation and I had a, let’s call it an episode of my rage and it was directed outward and it impacted a family member.

And I was in a pretty, I’d say a dark spot. And this was like probably the third incident over a short period of time. And it got my attention because what I saw was like, was impacting my children and other people I cared about. And so the raising of my hand ⁓ was getting connected with a mental health trauma in rehabilitation.

facility, a residential treatment facility that focuses on mental health and addiction and, you know, trauma ⁓ recovery. So I went to this place, Sierra Tucson in Arizona, and spent 30 days there. And it was like going to school for adults. And it’s interesting because there were

people from all walks of life from 18 up into in their seventies and you know, people who just needed a healing environment like that to figure out like what’s under the surface that needs attention. And so that was a time where I learned a lot about addiction, a lot about codependency, a lot about the…

connection between what we eat and our mental health, know, the mind-body connection. I learned a lot about regulation of emotions through breathing, breath work and meditation and grounding practices. ⁓ Literally, it was like 30 days of school and a very kind of

pristine bubble like environment, which then led to like a wind down or a step down type of thing. And I went for 30 days and I lived in a sober living house in Houston, Texas, which was a way to integrate back into life, but not fully because you spend now 60 days in a place getting to know yourself.

getting to know what you may be putting language to what you might have struggled with and understanding how childhood has a significant impact on our lives. You got to.

reintegrate back into the real world because one of the things that we learned quickly is although I was gone for 60 days, I go back into my life and everybody else has been doing life the way they were doing it before. there’s a big adjustment there. So help was very significant, ⁓ taking it seriously, recognizing that ⁓ there’s a, ⁓ that’s the kind of help I needed. And it was really because

Like, ⁓ that methodical way of pushing everything down worked until it didn’t.

Anthony Codispoti (37:50)
At what point along the way did faith become an important part of your life?

Tim Perdion (37:56)
Well. ⁓

You know, I was exposed to the 12 step programs when I went through the treatment place and all that and that was back in 2019. But it wasn’t until 2021 that I stepped into a church that was a non-denominational church. And again, I was raised Catholic, so I had exposure to religion. But the church I went to, you know, in 2021 was what I would just call, you know, the pastor.

would say is, if you’re a dysfunctional person like us, we’re here just trying to make Jesus make sense. So was a very, you the first ⁓ series that I stepped into was about toxic relationships. And so like that became like something that I said, this is just like my life. And I understand through all the mental health work and all the, you know, the that kind of inner work I’ve done.

And so things just started to connect for me and started to make sense. And so it was a very inviting place, a place that I felt comfortable, didn’t feel judgment, didn’t feel shame, didn’t feel like I felt like I belong.

Bless you.

Anthony Codispoti (39:14)
Thank

you Yeah for people just on the audio version I was muted and so ⁓ Tim wasn’t imagining that I did actually sneeze ⁓ And so Tim you’re coming out, you know 30 days in Arizona 30 days in Texas ⁓ So 60 days kind of being unplugged from your regular life And I have to imagine you’re coming out feeling quite different than you did going in

Tim Perdion (39:39)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (39:41)
And now you’re back in an environment where everybody else sort of feels and operates the same way that they always have. How was that transition back into your old life?

Tim Perdion (39:51)
It was a, I’ll say it was a challenging transition, but I had tools that I didn’t have before. So it was.

⁓ helpful to have a toolkit of things that I could draw upon that helped me deal with people where they’re at. And ⁓ yet at the same time is challenging. But I think what I noticed most was I had community and I had understood then the power of community versus isolation. So the reintegration back into my life, ⁓ really the power of community and the power of not having to do all this on my own was one of the biggest lessons I

learned and having a toolkit that was ⁓ more rich in terms of resources to cope in healthy ways.

Anthony Codispoti (40:42)
without using any personally identifiable information, can you share a story with us about a time since then that you’ve been able to use some of those skills that you learned to help somebody else that you could now tell was in a place of need?

Tim Perdion (41:01)
Yeah, so I had a.

One of my now really good friends come to me ⁓ shortly after I came out of that place. And, you know, I had shared a bit of my story. I wrote a LinkedIn article about, you know, vulnerability and asking for help. And I shared a bit of my journey and my story. And someone came into my office and he was struggling and shared a bit about his own ⁓ childhood of

divorced parents, father struggled with alcohol and drugs. And he was in his late 20s and shared some of what his struggles were with relationships. And he just opened up to me. And I think when I…

became vulnerable, opened the door for people to connect. you know, that’s one of those things that like, I think it’s the power of telling stories because there’s really nobody on this earth that is living a perfect life and isn’t, you know, struggling with something. And often they’re struggling in secret or hiding. So really.

What this blossomed into is like, you know, he’s now one of my best friends and his walk and my walk through self, you know, personal growth and into spiritual growth. We’ve been on this parallel journey. So it would never have happened if I wouldn’t have kind of just shared a bit about what I had experienced in my own personal growth journey.

Anthony Codispoti (42:45)
And I understand that the last couple of years have probably been the biggest period of personal growth for you. Can you say more about that?

Tim Perdion (42:53)
Yeah, so I think one of the things that I would say is now having that, let’s call it sensitivity to ⁓ energy of others and the energy I would refer to as people that might be struggling with things. I tend to have a nose for situations.

So I’ll say I might attract that. And being very empathetic, you can kind of just sense the energy. And I had some challenges in my prior job where things weren’t going as well as I would have liked. And maybe I was in the receiving end of some of that energy. And

You know, one of the things that I guess I went to a men’s retreat in this time period and like one of the big things we talk about is surrendering and really letting go and recognizing that we’re not in control. And when we surrender, higher power can kind of take over. so I ended up

I’ll call it surrendering and my life changed dramatically. ⁓ I left that job and really.

dove, I’ll say, two feet in. And, you know, I might have surrendered a bunch of stuff in the past prior to that, but I don’t know that I went all in. And when I really became connected with other people through this church, and, you know, mostly men and developing relationships with men who were on this journey together, a lot of things in my life shifted for the better. And it didn’t mean that things got easier always, but ⁓

I basically said, okay, I’m in, I’m all in, and frankly, I’m going to let go, surrendering things that I wasn’t in control of, and I’m going to make sure that I’m, you know, taking care of myself. I’m in community. And, ⁓ you know, I ended up coming to ascend, you know, through that process. And, you know, what was really important to me was looking for an organization that was in alignment with what I value and was

a place where ⁓ the leadership is authentic. They’re committed to creating a psychologically safe environment for people to work, where people can bring their best version of themselves, where people can feel ⁓ valued and able to contribute, able to challenge things, challenging status quo and ⁓ all that, where it’s a safe space to do that. ⁓

Yeah, it’s amazing when we let go of some of the illusion that we’re in control of things that we’re not. And so I guess what I would just say there is that I just really put more into my faith journey, recognizing that I ⁓ don’t have to prove myself. I don’t have to… ⁓

you know, ⁓ worry about what other people might think and just become more in community with people who are like-minded and, you supportive.

Anthony Codispoti (46:26)
And so how does that show up at Ascend? What is it that people say or do that shows you and everyone else that works there that this is a safe place where you support each other?

Tim Perdion (46:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, we, everybody seems to be open to and collaborative in listening and hearing ideas. And, you know, I have many decades of experience and I’m in a workforce that’s very diverse in terms of the spectrum of ages and generations that are in there. So ⁓ people want to hear what

someone who has a bit of experience has to say, and ⁓ I don’t need to be right about things all the time, but like I’ve had a lot of different experiences that are valuable in service of what we’re doing ⁓ at Ascend, whether it’s, you know, challenges in large scale projects and seeing like, what are the things that, you know, we need to kind of make sure we’re watching out for from a risk standpoint. So it feels like a safe environment from the standpoint that people are open

it’s collaborative, it’s servant oriented, know, one of the values are people first, serving wholeheartedly, you know, we want to win, we want to help people win, but we want to do it together. And so, you know, we’re, I would say we’re like on the same side of the table attacking problems together versus internally competitive.

Anthony Codispoti (48:04)
There’s a lot of good ground we just covered there, Tim. Thanks for diving into all that. ⁓ From sort of shifting gears a little bit, what about a book or a podcast, another resource that has been helpful for you in ⁓ this path that you’ve walked that you might recommend to other folks?

Tim Perdion (48:22)
Well, there’s a couple that like stand out, but the book that really got my attention that I read before my spiritual awakening and then went to a couple of retreats ⁓ sponsored by, about this book is John Eldridge’s Wild at Heart. And it’s a book about

the reclamation of the male masculine heart. And it really is a journey of discovery through the phases of,

living early in our lives to being a true son of the Creator versus like a son of an earthly father. And it helps men go through the process of looking at all those different types of things that they may not have gotten grown up in terms of true fatherhood. You know, our fathers on earth are imperfect people and so they all do the best they can with what they have but

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t remnants of that that leave us with marks that, you know, can take some time to recover from. So John Eldridge’s book was like really profound. went to several retreats through my church that were, you know, all about like that journey. That’s really powerful. I listened to so many podcasts. Another book that I would say that really opened my eyes to the things in me.

that I needed to kind of work through was a book called From Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship. And that was ⁓ for a person who struggles with trust, who might have fears of rejection, fears of abandonment, fears of things that might be rooted in early life experiences.

to the bridge to feeling peace and freedom and more like spiritual sonship, the bridge is forgiveness. So a lot of people might have trouble trusting other people. I think, you know, growing up as an adopted person, I didn’t always know why, but like, you know, it’s hard for me to get close to people because I have this like subconscious fear of abandonment.

So ⁓ that book was really profound, opened my eyes to like, if you want to be free, you’ve got to learn to trust other people and also the creator.

Anthony Codispoti (50:53)
Mm.

Getting back to sort of ascend and work related things, I’m curious to hear what projects are you most excited about moving forward? Something you guys are kind of tinkering on at the moment that you’re excited to see come to fruition.

Tim Perdion (50:59)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, we are 20 firms and we have firms that have, I’ll say, independent application stacks, meaning they all kind of have tools that do the same things, but they’re different tools.

And we’re looking at like, what does it look like when we’re 50 and what do we need to be doing now to make sure that what we ⁓ enable is scalability? And as we think about the way to scale an organization, standardization is important. Standardization of data, standardization of process. And then also what you can do once you standardize is you can automate. So we’re looking at the strategy of the tools that we want to

use. So we might go from disparate application stacks to kind of a standardized application stack that everybody uses and will standardize certain components of the data and the processes, which then helps form an integration standpoint. So every time we acquire a firm, now here’s the stack that we’re going to bring you on to. And it’s powerful because it’s integrated, it’s efficient, also ⁓ integrates really well with our AI tools.

So as soon as you join us, you now get this really powerful set of tools to help amplify, accelerate your performance, your ability to do the work, and it frees up capacity to help people focus on what it takes to grow. So that kind of foundational piece of technology that’s technology, but also process and data oriented is what we’re.

⁓ what we’re focused on like figuring out now so that we can really help accelerate our scalability.

Anthony Codispoti (53:08)
I could see that being incredibly helpful as you guys move forward and also ⁓ very bumpy in the interim as you make that transition and try to get people on board with moving away from the tools that they’re comfortable and familiar with. you already in process of this or this is still sort of in the thinking and planning stages?

Tim Perdion (53:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

It’s in the thinking and planning stages. And what I would say is that we’re aligning on the challenges we have today. And what we have is we have the benefit of like two and a half years of experience in going through these acquisitions and then bringing the acquisitions together. So we have two and a half years of experience of. ⁓

Will this scale the way we’re going now or what have we learned that we might need to tweak now so that we can make it less bumpy for the way we want to scale? And if we were to start from scratch, it would probably be easy. like you mentioned, in order to…

grow like we want to, there’s an emptying out of what we have already done that we need to do so that we can fill it and grow. there’s a, that change management is a huge component of what we need to kind of work through. So the tool is the tool. It’s not really as much about the tool as it is about kind of the alignment on the change and alignment on the operating model.

Anthony Codispoti (54:42)
Tim, I’ve just got one more question for you. Before I ask it, I wanna do two things. First, everyone listening, pause for just a second, go to your podcast app, go ahead and hit the follow or subscribe button. It ensures that you continue to get more great interviews like this in your feed and it helps other people find the show too. Tim, I wanna let people know the best way to get in touch with you or to follow your story. What would that be?

Tim Perdion (55:04)
Yeah, I’d say from a professional standpoint, LinkedIn is probably the best way to connect. ⁓ That’s the one I’m probably a little bit more active on and easy to find me on LinkedIn.

Anthony Codispoti (55:16)
and we’ll get a link to that in the show notes for everybody. Last question I have for you, the year from now you and I reconnect and you’re celebrating something big. What’s that thing you’re celebrating one year from today?

Tim Perdion (55:32)
Well, I think ⁓ another year of growth, but I would say I’m in this space of looking at ways in which not only professionally, but personally, how do I take all of what I’ve learned? And I might package that up and say, maybe there’s been some pain, maybe there’s been trials and tribulations, but how do I take all of that and really turn that into purpose?

And I think every day new people are coming into my life and I’m connecting with people in ways I never would have imagined years ago.

So I know that like all of what I’ve learned, all of what I’m sharing is a great way to connect with other people. And that is the most fulfilling thing is when I’m connecting with somebody who might’ve been struggling in some ways, but maybe couldn’t connect those dots on their own. And so if we’re a year from now, we’re talking about like another really acceleration of growth in my life and really the realization of what my true calling is and how to

really continue to use those gifts personally, socially, spiritually and professionally.

Anthony Codispoti (56:45)
I love that. Tim Perdan from Ascend Partner Services. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Tim Perdion (56:53)
Well, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (56:56)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.