Inside the Mission: How ASCEND is Driving Industry Transformation with Will Grindle

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Inside the Mission: How ASCEND is Driving Industry Transformation with Will Grindle

I have with me a special guest. His name is Will Grindle. He is the CEO of Ascend Wireless Networks. We’re going to have an amazing conversation, first of all, so you don’t want to miss this. You want to focus. Make sure you’re here with us because this is going to inspire you. Will, thank you for joining me.

Thank you. This is a pleasure.

You have an incredible path to your seat. I’d like you to share that with everyone because that in itself is an inspiration.

I started in the industry in 2011. I was invited by what would eventually be a business partner to come in and help him clean up some warehouse and logistics in the Southeast. It was a part-time gig. I went in and got to get invested and figure out what this whole wireless space was from a warehouse perspective. Through the time that I was there doing that, I fell in love with the industry. It was different. I didn’t know anything about it. I was able to progress from that and decide, “I’m going to give this thing a year and not say no to anything they ask me to do. I’m going to follow that and see where it goes.”

For a whole year, I continued to do everything they asked me to do. I got to travel and do some things in the Chicago area with some lighting projects. I came back, worked in Nashville as a civil tech, and started becoming a tower tech and learning the tower side. About a year after that, the gentleman that brought me into the industry said, “I would like to go do something on my own. Would you want to go and do it with me?” At that point, I was 26 years old. I didn’t have a lot to lose at that young of an age. I was excited about it. I had an opportunity to go create a business that I would love to work at. It was a business that I felt like I had an impact on and a reason for.

We started that business in 2013, which is Ascend. On day one, I was the project manager, the tower top technician, the foreman, the civil lead, the closeout manager, and the payroll. We were everything, so we got to learn everything from the bottom. For the next three years, I physically built every site where Ascend was put under their control. It was a great experience to learn that.

I never grew up and thought that I was going to be a business owner. It was never that. I grew up in sports. I always was in more of a team aspect my whole life. Coming into the business world, a lot of that stuff transitioned over to realizing that great companies have great leaders, but great leaders have great teams, and great teams have great leaders. Not everybody’s going to be the quarterback. Everybody else is important. Their contribution and training are all important. I never thought, “Let’s build a great business.” It was, “Let’s go see if we can make this work.”

For three years, we were on and off grinding, building all these sites. Our name got out there. Our brand got out there. Our work got out there. We started getting invited to opportunities to go direct. We went direct after six months of being in business. We went direct with Verizon, and that was through my partner at the time. His vision and his connections got us in the door. Ever since then, we’ve built this business that has a mindset to do business the right way, but also, there’s a way to do business a better way. This June 2023, we celebrate our 10th anniversary. It’s been a journey. It’s been amazing to watch it.

What I love about this industry and the path that I took was I can relate to every worker that we have because I was in that position at some point. I was on the road away from my family. I was away from my wife and my kids. I was in the heat of Florida. I was in the cold of Tennessee and the national area. I can relate to that point. As I learned as a leader, 80% of a leader’s success is their emotional intelligence. As we go through this and built this business, it started flourishing. People wanted to be a part of this. As we are 10 years old this June 2023, it’s amazing to see where we’ve been and where we are. Where we’re going is exciting.

80% of a leader’s success is their emotional intelligence.

What a story. I get chills hearing that. Introduce Ascend Wireless Networks. Who do you serve? What services do you offer, and also, what markets?

At Ascend Wireless, we are a telecom contractor. We’re a licensed GC and EC. We are majorly in the Southeast. We’re trying to get a stronger foothold in the Southeast. We serve all the main carriers. We’re direct with all the main carriers. Verizon is the largest that we provide for. We provide electrical services, LNA, project management, real estate, and site act. We do CoLOS, new builds, DaaS, and small cells. We have our hands in everything. Generator deployments, we do a lot of that stuff.

We’re soup to nuts. We can go all the way from design to implementation. We’re looking to serve more in the Southeast. Florida has been where it all started. We have a strong presence in Florida. We have an office outside of Nashville, so we’re able to do it in Tennessee and the Carolinas. We are in the Georgia-Alabama region. I’m starting to kick that off as of 2023.

You have a big vision. It’s not only for your company, Ascend, but it’s for the industry as a whole. I’ve heard your name from so many people in the industry. We were at the South Wireless Summit. People were talking about you and that vision. I know we’re going to get into a little bit more about this, but you’re making a positive impact. Let’s say that. Share a part of that vision, and then we can open it up throughout the episode.

Here at Ascend, our main goal is to love our people and love our people well. We’re in the people business. What we do is not possible without people. It’s not possible without your project managers, construction managers, all the way down to your green guys, civil, and foremen. Our goal is to deeply invest in our employees and to meet them where they’re at.

We tagged this line of where we are focusing on our employees at a deeper need, Ascend wants to be more than a paycheck. We want to have a purpose. We believe that people want a purpose because they were made on purpose for a purpose. We know that everyone has that purpose. We want to be able to say, “What is the need for the employee that benefits them and their families but also, in turn, benefits us as a company?”

Truthfully, as the CEO and the leader of the company, my loyalty sits with my employees. Those are the ones that God has given to me to steward. I’m responsible for that. Here at Ascend, our vision as leaders is as you’re promoted higher, your job title becomes more of a service. Your responsibilities are more of a service to serve our employees. We focus on developing the employee and letting the employee develop the product, which, in turn, they deliver to the customer. The customer requires us to grow and take on more.

Our vision here is to be better. When we look at our P&L, our largest cost is our people. It is our payroll. When we look at that, we say, “Is our greatest asset appreciating or depreciating?” We focus on the appreciation of our employees. We want everyone to encounter and have a better experience when they come in contact with Ascend.

Through the recruiting process, we know that’s a touchpoint for us. The business development side is a touchpoint for us. Our employees and our operations are a touchpoint for us. We want every touchpoint that we have as a company to be a blessing to others. We believe that we are blessed to be a blessing to this industry.

We want to transform this industry. We want to create a better standard because there’s no detailed standard for the industry. I feel for us as an industry to continue to create more predictability and consistency in what we do as businesses. What the carrier can bank on to meet their numbers and their goals is we have to create a better standard. That’s through training and better work practices. We focus on that.

Some of the unique things that we do as a company is we have a chaplain for all of our offices. We have a service that our employees have another person in their life whom they’re able to talk with confidentially and work through whatever life’s throwing at them. We all have issues. We all have stuff that we’re dealing with personally. If I have stuff that personally I need to be working through, it would be naive for me to think that my employees are not going through that.

We provide this service. If we have employees that are going through things or team members that are going through things, they’re able to access this chaplain. There are resources the chaplain can get them involved in. If there’s a cost, it comes back to the company. We pay the cost of counseling. We do Mortgage 101 assistance. We’ve partnered with a mortgage company that allows our employees to, once a month, engage in what we call Mortgage 101.

These are people that are thinking about getting one or maybe they want to get one or want to know if they qualify down this mortgage path. They’re able to say, “I want to buy a house in the next year.” We have a company that will take all their finances, look through everything, and help them become mortgage worthy. Although, they can fulfill that goal. That’s our biggest dream here. It is to see people buy their first home, see their kids born, and see their kids graduate high school.

We want to create a company where people want to be here forever and look at this as their company. I do want to be a CEO that if I was to step away or the Lord reassigns me and calls me somewhere else, this business keeps going. This business isn’t about me. That’s why we look to our employees to help them be successful in all stages of life, whether that is in their parenting, marriage, finances, or even the way they invest. We enjoy that. We love diving into that.

We can’t forget as business owners, CEOs, and leaders that there is still a human factor. We still are dealing with humans. We’re dealing with souls. We’re dealing with people that have come from different walks of life than we have. They’ve had different experiences. They have dreams. We’re investing here and listening to our employees’ dreams so we can help them get there. My dreams and what I want to do are way different than the dreams of some of our employees, but it doesn’t make them less important.

We want to bring people where they’re at a place where they feel like they belong and thrive. People feel like their voice is heard. Every day that they show up, what they do for the company matters. You have a company that’s moving forward. You have a company that’s growing. That’s our major intent. It is to focus on how we invest in our employees so in turn, they invest in the company, and that the goals that we’re trying to reach, we are all rowing in the same direction. 

You have created a new definition of people first. That’s for sure. With so many companies and leaders in telecom with so much on their plate as we continue to deploy wireless, 5G, and broadband, as leaders, let’s say, how do we prioritize people, profit, and project success? Labor is expensive. Capital is expensive. Margins are tight. How can companies thrive in these conditions and make sure it all works? What’s working for you here?

For us, it’s always been this mentality to do more with less. What we found out that’s worked for us is having an open book for our company. We share our mission, vision, and core values with our employees. What we also share with them is how they play a part in that. We don’t want the culture to exist with 1 or 2 people. We want people to be put back into that culture as we move forward.

For us, we look at better training. We’ve started organizing and facilitating some blue-collar skill trade schools. We’re attracting new talent into the industry that never knew the industry was there but also making them aware of something they didn’t know existed. Also, we work in an industry where you can make a good living. We talk a lot about blue-collar work but a white-collar lifestyle. By trying to restore dignity back into working with your hands, you can make a great living. You can make a lot of things in your life possible through the talents that God has given you.

We have two classes in our country. We’ve got a white-collar class and a blue-collar class, but we only seem to have one education system for both. What we’ve learned for most kids that are coming out of high school and that are launching into careers is college is not an option for them. There’s nothing that they can bank on in their hometown, in their state, or wherever they may be. They’re looking for opportunities to take, “I like to work outside. I like to work at heights. I like to do electrical work. I like to do these things.” We’re pushing them and pulling them into these schools to train them to have the hard skills, but also teaching them to have the soft skills. In that, employer retention is going up.

Once someone feels that you care deeply about them and they know that they can thrive and they know that they belong where they’re at, you have this employee retention. If you can keep people over time, the cost goes down. We’ve seen those numbers in the margin where they’ve started creeping up. For us, too, we want to create a better standard for what a crew looks like, what a telecom company looks like, and the way it looks. I know there are a lot of business owners out there that want to be a part of that.

Once someone feels that you care deeply about them and they can thrive where they are at, you can secure employee retention and keep your costs down.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but as I started stepping out and talking to people that have gone before and done it, it is not rocket science. It helps us keep our mission and vision in line, what we’ve committed to our employees in line, but also what we’ve committed to the carrier or our customer on what they expect us to deliver.

I love hearing about this school, this training center, and also the white collar, blue collar, and how you’re restoring dignity to blue-collar roles and all of this. It’s so timely with what we need industry-wide, especially with the BEAD funding coming and continuing to deploy 5G and all the resources that we need that are laborers and field techs. You’re letting people know, “This is an amazing opportunity that you can get in and grow.” In your case going from a field tech and tower tech to the CEO and owner of a company, that’s possible, right?

It is. One thing that I would say to encourage people that are reading that maybe are trying to figure out their path, there is no one path. There’s no one way to get there. There are no ABC steps to becoming the CEO or what it is that you desire to be or dream to be. Take my path and the story that I have here. There are millions of stories that are like this. There’s a gentleman that I know that owns a chip manufacturer. He didn’t even graduate high school, but he took his skills. He knew what he could do. Every day, he showed up learned, gave it all he got, and left the rest of it in the Lord’s hands.

There’s no one path to get to where you want to go. People need to hear and understand that. Don’t be embarrassed about the talents that you have. If you’re a tower tech, you’re at the bottom, or you’re blue-collar, don’t be embarrassed about that. Things in this world don’t exist if we didn’t have blue-collar workers. The buildings we’re sitting in, the roads we’re driving on, the cars that we drive, and even the groceries that get delivered to our home where we don’t have to go to the grocery store all start with someone that was doing it with their hands. We want to shine a light on that to restore dignity to that.

The white-collar class needs the blue-collar in the same way. The blue collar needs the white collar. Instead of us versus them, we have the curtain between the C-level and the operations. It wasn’t meant to be that way. Once you have a team that can collaborate and has that chemistry, there’s nothing that’s going to stand in your way with what you can get done and the possibilities that are out there for you personally and for your business.

Can you go into a little bit more detail about your company culture? I know you’ve talked about it quite a bit so far in all the programs and what you do for your employees. In any other initiatives or values, what is it like to work for Ascend?

We have a tagline, first, that says, “It’s not business. It’s personal. I’ve always struggled with the tagline or the line that people use like, “It’s just business.” I felt like that was an excuse to do something that morally people knew wasn’t right. We talk about that all the time that it’s not business. It’s personal. For us, because of our faith and our convictions, we can’t separate that. We weren’t designed to separate who we were with our work. That’s not the way we were created. That’s not what we were meant to be.

When we think about it and look at it, one of our core values is empathy. We live in a world that lacks empathy. Globally, we lack empathy. We don’t look at people the same way we used to. We don’t look at the human soul. We don’t talk about these things because, in this world, we are geared around our schedule, agenda, and goals. Those are the things that we need to start focusing on.

I was reading something talking about givers and takers. It was about the giver mentality and the taker mentality. The American dream has been hijacked by takers. When we start having that giver mindset, we start thinking of others first. That’s something we say a lot here. We say we’re an “others first” company. We’re going to put people’s thoughts before ours. I tell our team all the time, “The most valuable thing that we learned in life, we learned in kindergarten. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Keep your hands to yourself. Put others before yourself.”

The greatest thing for your soul is to put others first and to do something for someone to be able to stand in that gap. We talk about there being times in everyone’s lives when we’ve had someone that’s done something for us that we couldn’t do ourselves. Even in the country that we live in, the freedoms we experience came at the price of someone else’s blood. We think about those things all the time of, “How do we focus down the road and focus outward and not inward?”

When we talk about empathy, we talk about standing beside your brother or sister and shouldering the things that are going on in their life but also what goes on in the business. We talk about generosity. We talk about how we want to be a company that leads with generosity. Mostly, when people think about generosity, they think about money.

When you’re thinking about generosity, and we want to lead strictly with generosity, it’s more than money. It’s our possessions, titles, status, fame, and all that stuff. It’s more than that. We look at it and say, “How do we take these things that we’ve been given? We’ve been given a platform in the business. How do we take this platform and move it forward so that we can change people’s lives?”

In the telecom industry, all we do is connect people. That’s all we do. When we’re running fiber and doing all this work, it’s for people to connect. Communication is important. We were created to communicate and connect with one another. We take a lot of pride in what we do, knowing that we are the people in the middle. Whatever the carrier and the end user are trying to do, we are connecting the two. It is so that you can take those calls when one of your family members is sick. It could be to reach your kids that are growing up and out of the house on their birthday and FaceTime. All these things that were created didn’t happen if we didn’t exist. We take a lot of pride in that.

We talk about generosity and giving back and what that means. If you have more than $800 in your bank account, you’ve got more money than 80% of the world. We lose that human factor again. We lose reality because we always see more. We always want more. We’re striving for more. Most leaders and executives are driven. We’re driven people. We become accelerators and accumulators. When we see it, we go get it.

What we have to do and what we’ve had to do as a team is slow down, step back, and say, “What’s the main reason Ascend exists? What’s the main reason that X company exists?” We get an opportunity. We’re the vessel to provide a path for people for their careers and for their life. We talk a lot in our culture about generosity.

One big thing to us is dignity. We have to get better at who we are as people. The industry was known for not having a driver’s license and not having any certain things. It is this crazy industry, but I don’t believe it. This is a highly-skilled, technical industry. You can’t come off the street on day one and do what these guys do.

I tell our tower climbers and foremen that they can be as professional as they want to be. If they want to wear a collared shirt to climb the tower, I will provide a shirt for them to climb a tower. I want them to take pride in what they do. I want them to know that what they’re doing is far greater than what they’ve been told. Creating that in our culture and talking about that helps people get from what I call off the bench and in the game.

Who is Will Grindle the leader? What principles guide you?

My faith is what grounds me in this. I call myself the interim CEO. People are like, “What do you mean? You’re leaving?” I’m like, “No. I’m the CEO now, but at some point, someone else is going to be the CEO of this company. Someone else is going to own this far beyond, hopefully, when I leave this earth.” My faith has always grounded me to say people matter.

The biggest command is to love God and love others. As I see what goes on in the world, I see all this craziness as everybody else does. We forgot to love one another. What I love about my job is I get to love people. I get the opportunity to step in and be a part of what’s going on in people’s lives because I have an amazing team here that keeps the operations, finance, HR, and business development going. God has brought amazing teammates that we have here.

My goal is when people look at Ascend, they don’t see me. They see a place where people are loved and people are cared about. For me, my faith has driven me into saying, “I know that I’m going to be responsible for what God has given me to steward along with my wife, my kids, and the things in my family.” Besides sleeping, working is the other thing that we do the most. Sometimes, most of us probably work more than we sleep. We spend so much time together with these people.

I have a couple of friends that are pastors around at the local church. I said, “The amazing thing about me versus you is people have a choice to come to see you on Sunday. They don’t have a choice but to come and see me on Monday through Friday because they’re at work. They’re coming to work every day. These people are walking through our door.”

Everyone, even me, wants to feel valued. Every life has value. I don’t think there are going to be a lot of people that would argue that every life has value. For me, as I go back and say, “What legacy do I want to leave?” I want to leave a legacy that people say, “Every time that I needed something, he was there. Every time that I brought something to the table, whether it be business or personal, they truthfully did help me take it to the next step.”

I always look at the spectrum from left to right. In life, they’re on different levels of that spectrum, but our goal at Ascend is every day to help individuals take one more step forward into who they are and where they want to go, whether that be personally, professionally, or in their faith. We’re helping them take one more step further in that journey of where they want to accomplish and what they want to accomplish in their life.

Something that I’ve focused on here is if we want to change our lives, the world, or our relationships and attitudes, we have to change our words. Words can build up, and words can destroy. We value and talk a lot about how we talk to one another. We have a rule here at Ascend that says you have to act your age. If you’re two years old, you can act two. If you’re 45, you got to act 45.

Most of that’s with us in the words that we do. We always talk about how nothing opens doors like the word please, mends fences like the word sorry, and builds bridges like the word thanks. If we can remember that as a leadership team in the way that we talk to our customers, our employees, and each other when we talk about transforming this industry, we can start transforming our little corner in the industry by the way that we talk and the words that we use. We focus on that.

Nothing opens doors like the word please, mends fences like the word sorry, and builds bridges like the word thanks.

We lead from a position of transparency and vulnerability because you can’t fool people. People can see right through this, especially people that have been in business and stuff for a while. We want to lead with transparency. We want to make sure we always say, “If you are going to say it, you better do it. If you’re not going to do it, don’t say it.” We’re very focused on how we do that and how we care for people a lot deeper.

There was something that I’ve been convicting with our team. We sat and talked about it. I said, “Why do we live our life like we’re going to live forever? What makes us so sure that we have the time?” We all think, “I’m going to leave a legacy later in my career. I’m going to have a succession plan later in my career. I’ll do that when I have the money. I’ll do this.” We plan things like we’re going to live forever. The reality is at some point, we’re going to be taken from this earth. That’s it. That’s going to be it for us with the impact that we leave on this earth.

For us, as we live on that day-to-day, what is it that we need to do that we can continue to push this forward? There are many frustrations in this industry and in business that are out of our control. How do we focus on the things that we can control, and how do we mitigate the things we can’t control? Those are things that we focus on and, for us, as leaders, that we want to change. We do want to make an impact. We do want to change it because we’re people over profit. The profit comes from the mindset of a company.

I’m present to the culture you and your team have created and everything you’ve said about your mission, your goals, your focus, the people, loving people, your faith, and all of it. All I can think about is the future of Ascend and where you’re going. With all of this in place, imagine the retention, the engagement, and the way that people are going to be excited every day and feel so good about what they’re doing. I want to know. What is next for Ascend? Tell me where you’re going next.

We talk about it a lot. We want to focus on being better where we are throughout the Southeast. We want to focus on better, and then our customers will demand that we be bigger. There is always a better way. Everything’s changing day-to-day in this industry and the way we do life. The way people thought about working in 2020, they think about it way differently in 2023. As we continue to get better at what we do, our customers will demand that we be bigger.

We’re trying to solidify a great, stable footprint throughout the Southeast because that’s where we started and where we feel we have the assets. Our goal over the next several years is to have a nationwide presence. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be in every state across the nation, but we want to be able to grow and help our partners and customers to reach the goals they need. We’re going to grow with them. We are trying to make a push over the next several years.

If you’d asked me this question a few years ago, I never had answers to being big. I didn’t want to be big. I don’t want to be big, but I was convicted by a mentor of mine that said, “What you are doing and the impact you’re making on 60 people and the mindset that these 60 people are having to go throughout the industry, think if you had 1,000 people that were doing this.

Think if you had 2,000 people doing this, being fed like this, and changed like this. As you talk about these things and go throughout the industry, think of the other business owners and leaders that say, “I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but I didn’t know how to.” That was me years ago. I didn’t know how. Those are the things that I think, “What is a sin going to look like?”

Ultimately, for us, we want to glorify God in everything that we do. We want people to know that they’re loved. We want them to know that there’s a God that loves them, God has a plan for them, and God has a purpose for them. They were no mistake. It doesn’t matter what their parents tell them. They weren’t a mistake. They were created on purpose for a purpose. We believe that by coming and being a part of our team, connecting with our team, and hitching your wagon with Ascend, we can pursue that purpose.

There are a lot of people in this industry that want to see something different than what the industry is. We see what the last several years have been like in the industry. We know that we can’t continue that same path. We know that we have to change. We want to be at the forefront of pushing that. We also want to invite other business owners, CEOs, carriers, and all these people that are facilitated to say, “Let’s all bound together and push forward to make sure that we lead this industry better than we found it.”

This is a message every single person reading needs to know and could have gotten something from this message. I agree with you. The industry is shifting. Your heart, your vision, and the way that you see the world and the company that you’re creating are what we all need to do with the changing workforce. It’s becoming more human. People have challenges with mental health. They’re bringing their whole selves to work. We need to be able to help the whole person.

There’s so much value here. I’m going to read this over and over again. I get so inspired when I talk to you. I want to thank you for taking a stand. Who you are, your heart, and your love for people, you’re taking a stand for it and inviting us all as leaders to say, “Let’s all do this together.” I find that so inspiring. I want to thank you for coming to the show. It’s been fantastic. It’s an honor to know you.

Thank you. I appreciate what you’re doing and forging ahead in the industry with your space. You’re giving us another person and another avenue to start doing things differently and to know that change in this industry is for the better.

Tell me. How can we find out more about Ascend Wireless Networks?

We have our website. AscendWirelessNetworks.com is a great stop for us. We’re rebuilding it. It’s going to be a fun website that is a little more interactive. It is going to have a good touch of who we are and our mission, vision, and core values. We have that. You can always reach out to me directly at Will.Grindle@AscendWirelessNetworks.com. We’re across all the social media platforms as @AscendWirelessNetworks.

We’re trying to invite people in on the story that God’s writing here. We’re also inviting people to say, “Where is my part in this?” I’ve always been a firm believer that when you hear something and know something and don’t do something about it, that’s on you. I can’t be responsible for the things that I don’t know, but what I worry about more than anything is the things that I do know that I’m not doing.

I invite people to have that Peter mindset to say, “It’s time to get out of the boat and get both feet on the water. Get off the bench. Let’s go do what we know we can do, but let’s do it together.” If only one person is doing it, it only can grow as big as that one person. As they say, “A strand of three cords is not easily broken.”

Let’s do it together. I’m in. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Thanks for coming to the show.

Thank you.

Take care.

Important Links

•  Ascend Wireless Networks
• Will.Grindle@AscendWirelessNetworks.com
• @AscendWirelessNetworks – LinkedIn

About Will Grindle

Will is the co-founder and CEO of ASCEND Wireless Networks. Will served as the COO since 2013 when the company was founded and in December 2022, he took over the reigns as CEO. With over 12 years of experience working with small/larger companies and high performing teams Will leads the way in knowing there is a better way to do business. He feels that Ascend is a great company with a greater purpose with a focus to transform the industry through better work practices and education. Encouraging employees and teammates to live and work with a higher purpose. With this “Others First” mindset ASCEND can be an industry leader that leads with generosity, empathy, dignity, and excellence. Creating a space where all employees belong and thrive. Will is married to the girl of his dreams and has 3 kids. In his free time, Will enjoys the water/outdoors with his family and serving his community and the underserved.