Our History
Like most great ideas, Ascend Live started with the phrase, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”
Our president is a financial planner. At one time she was also an active member of the sales force. One day she called the Company and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if… you guys could make us software that manages the money of a Mary Kay business? It’d be so great if you gave us an app that does the splits for us while balancing our checkbooks, and documents every cent spent so that tax time is easy?” Of course the lady listening on the other end of the line said yes, it would be nice. But she also said, “I think if Mary Kay Ash was listening to this conversation, she would tell you that you could have anything in her company that you want. Maybe you should make this idea of yours happen!” That’s where we started.
LeAnne cultivated the idea until it became a concept. Then she asked a family member to take the idea from concept to product. They spent the next year asking questions, interviewing Directors, and writing software. Ascend Financials – the software – made her humble début at Seminar 2004.
Since 2004 we have grown into a completely different company! We’ve had the privilege of working with tens-of-thousands of Consultants and Directors. We’ve been in well over a hundred cities teaching workshops, and we host online classes on money management 5 days a week.
Growth is always accompanied by growing pains – and we had our fair share of them! LeAnne’s little idea caught on and we were flooded with requests for new features. We were inundated with fresh perspectives and new thoughts. It became clear that the little app LeAnne and a family member made wouldn’t sustain our growth. Ascend’s first re-write and platform transfer was in 2006. It is followed by the much anticipated release of AscendLive.com
As a company we’ve grown tremendously. We are a passionate company spread across 5 cities and 3 time zones. Our team contains super-geeks, pseudo-geeks, starry-eyed visionaries, teachers, and financial professionals who are putting the fun in finance.
We have one goal: to help the Mary Kay professional run a profitable business!
We have one enemy: apathy about finance.
We aren't looking to outdo any of the big financial apps – we want Consultants and Directors to succeed with their businesses instead of living paycheck to paycheck, or one credit card bill to the next.