The Ascend Summit: A Story of Consistency & Perseverance - The Long Game - Ep. #92

Most people don't fail because the idea was bad. They fail because they quit before it had time to work.

In this episode of The Long Game Podcast, Ryan shares the origin story of the Ascend Summit and the lessons from this year's event that hit closest to home: what perseverance actually looks like in practice, why consistency is the variable most people underestimate, and why the best time to hire is always earlier than feels comfortable.

Ryan walks through how the Ascend Summit started three years ago with a trip to the Clever Summit in Florida, a Google Doc, and a conversation with his business partner Ben Carbone about why there was nothing like that in New England. What followed was a mastermind with 12 students, then a first summit of around 100 people, then a gradual expansion in scope, content, and vision that culminated in the 2026 Ascend Summit: 150 attendees, five panelists, a keynote speaker running a billion-dollar company, and a production team of 15. None of it happened at once. All of it happened because they stayed the course.

What You'll Learn:

• How the Ascend Summit went from an idea and a Google Doc to a 150-person event with a billion-dollar keynote speaker
• Why most businesses fail not because of a bad idea or weak work ethic, but because they stop too soon
• What Angelo Purina's story of working 72-hour stretches in a commercial kitchen teaches about what commitment to a vision actually looks like
• Why the best time to hire is 12 months before you think you need to, and what it costs to wait until it feels obvious
• How shiny object syndrome and the impulse to quit are often the same problem wearing different masks
• Why staying the course on one thing, even slowly, compounds in ways that starting five new things never will
• What it looks like to build something from nothing in public, including the social media cadence, the community, and the events that make it real

If you're sitting on an idea you keep starting and stopping, or a business that's growing but not fast enough, this episode is a direct and honest case for what it actually takes to see something through.

Interested in connecting?

HOST
Ryan Richards | Branch Manager, Northpoint Mortgage | NMLS 1987735
rrichards@trynorthpoint.com | www.financewithteamrichards.com 
204 Turnpike Rd, Westborough, MA 01581
Licensed in CT, FL, MA, ME, NH, RI, NC, SC, PA, TN

Follow us on Instagram @financewithteamrichards @the.longgamepodcast

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Chapters:
00:00 Big Ideas Intro
00:07 Conference Spark
01:01 Launching Informed Investor
01:23 Ascend Summit 2026 Highlights
02:10 Perseverance Pays Off
03:35 From Google Doc to Mastermind
04:06 First Summit and Bigger Vision
04:38 Building Community and Content
05:34 Loving the Grind
06:05 Angelo’s 72 Hour Hustle
06:55 Hire Before You Need To
07:59 Looking Ahead and Wrap Up

Transcript

0:00

If you're someone who has a lot of ideas but just can't figure out how to turn them into something tangible, then this will be hopefully a great story for you. So three years ago, I was down in a conference in Florida. It was the Clever Summit, gathered together thousands of real estate entrepreneurs to learn from other professionals about how they grew and scaled their companies. I mean, these were names like Patrick Bet-David, Ryan Serhant, I mean, significant professionals in their industry. And leading up to the event, our goal was to take away one or two things that we could actually take action on. When you go to an event like this, you get fire-hosed with information. There's way too many ideas, strategies, suggestions for you to, one, memorize, let alone put into action. So our goal was, let's see what we can learn, but hopefully we can take something from it. And what we did take was an inspiration to create an atmosphere like that room. And we had flown down from New England all the way to Florida to experience a setting like that. When we came back home, we realized there's nothing like that up here in the Northeast. We were yearning for that experience again somewhere local. So that's what really brought Ben and I together, my business partner, Ben Carbone. We started The Informed Investor with the objective of bringing together like-minded professionals to hear stories from other experienced entrepreneurs, sharing insights, being able to ask questions, getting advice, and creating a community of people who want to help others accomplish the things that they are or are going to do. And that was really capped off this year with our second annual event. We hosted the Ascend Summit in June of 2026, and we had over 150 people there. We had five entrepreneurs join us for a panel. We had a keynote speaker with, you know, over a billion-dollar company. And the conversations, some of the insights that I'm going to share with you, were truly the epitome of what we were trying to accomplish. So hopefully you learn something as we talk about some of the takeaways from Ascend 2026. So one of my biggest takeaways that a lot of the speakers subliminally messaged was the idea of perseverance, consistency, and continuing to relentlessly pursue whatever your goals are without the expectation of an immediate return And that really came true for the event that we put on. Most people fail, not because of the idea or because of their work ethic, but because they don't allow enough time for the work, effort, consistency to actually yield the results that they're hoping for. So you quit before you were, you were actually going to get there. That's why when you, you know, look on Instagram, there's more accounts that are inactive or unused than there are that are active. Just like when you look on podcasts, for example, most podcasts on Apple have a stop date. They don't continue to produce episodes, and the list goes on and on. It's not a function of that podcast not being strong with content or not having good insight. It's a matter of how many times that person was able to get in front of the camera, produce an episode, and continually repeat. You know, Apple started from a garage, and look what Apple is today. But that wasn't just because they started to build phones in a garage. It was because of the persistence behind it, and that was the same story we had with the Ascend Summit. We went from an idea in a room to a slow progression to where we are today, which ultimately we had a team of probably 15 people at the Ascend Summit from videographers, audio technicians, you know, social media directors, content creators that brought together this event. But we didn't start there. We started with, you know, Ben and I with an idea and a Google Doc. Where do we take this thing? What's the first action we can take? And we started with a mastermind. Our mastermind, we… Keep in mind, this is the first time we started it, right? So we have no materials. We have no rubric. We took a couple hours. We made a plan. Here's our course. Here's our material. And we rolled out a course. We had about 12 students. We ran a mastermind for three months. It was a quarter, and we had a, some great feedback. People were like, "Well, what's next? Look, we just did your mastermind. We wanna stay engaged, stay in the conversation. What's next?" That's what prompted our idea to let's do a summit. We'll bring together these people, everyone else, and we'll try to just share ideas, and our first summit was all real estate focused. We had around 100 people there, and it was great. But then we said, "Well, let's expand the vision. Why just real estate?" Both Ben and I have different businesses outside of real estate. Is there something else we can provide of value to more people? Some of the people who came were like,"Well, I own an electrical company," or, "I own an asphalt company. I wanna learn more about business owners." So we said, "That'd be a great idea." So we… It's an evolution. We progressed the idea, but meanwhile, throughout the rest of the year, we're continually trying to make improvements. We're starting our social media accounts. Can't just post once, so we're trying to… You know, we try to figure out a, a cadence, a schedule. What does our content look like? And now to where we are today, you know, we're posting almost every day during the week. We have, you know, a Facebook community that we're, we're continuing to be proactive and try to run, and we're curating these events yearly that we now are saying, "Do we go quarterly?" And eventually we will probably go quarterly and have this community, but it's a matter of just staying the course. You can't just expect to start an event today that has 100 people and run smoothly with videographers and professionals. It takes time to accumulate. So don't just have the idea and take a few steps Have the idea and see it through. And if it's an idea that you don't want to put that much effort into, then can it. Move on to the next one. Because you'll find an idea that you really believe in, and then you don't care how much work it takes. That's like me with my mortgage business, for example. I was joking with Trent this morning. He's like, "You were up at 4:30 answering emails and doing pre-approvals." And I was like, "Yes." He's like, "Well, why?" I'm like, "Because I had stuff to do. I, I don't care how much work I need. This, this is what I wanna do. I want this business to live forever." So you don't necessarily mind as much when you love what you're doing and you know the vision, and then you don't care how long it takes. That was a huge takeaway that all the spea- speakers really resonated on, was don't be afraid to continue to commit to the work, because eventually you will find success. One of the speakers, Angelo Purina, shared his incredible story, and for over two years he worked seven days a week, and three of those days he worked 24-hour shifts. So he worked 72 hours in a row, cooking in the kitchen by himself overnight, in a hot kitchen, late in the morning, late in the evening, cooking all night. Why? Because that was the only way their business could operate at the time and remain profitable, right? You can't… You have to decrease expenses in order to make more money. So he took on the task of, "I'm going to continue to do this until we find success." And now here they are today, you know, they're on track to be a nine-figure company. But it didn't start with just, "Turn the lights on, we're a nine-figure business," or, "Let me do these five things and we'll become a huge company." It takes time. So that was an awesome takeaway, really resonated with me and where I am today. Another great takeaway from the event was actually from Angelo as well, and he said something that really hit home with me, which is, when it comes to growing and scaling your company, the best time to hire someone is 12 months before you think you should. When you have the idea of I should hire someone- It's usually too late. You know, he, he was mentioning, "What's your goals for this upcoming year?" He goes, "Well, we need to hire X, Y, and Z in the next six months if we want to be X company by the end of next year." So he's hiring 12 months before he actually really needs those people to continue to grow. And I think I've talked about this before, but a lot of times entrepreneurs wait until the point where they're way too busy to actually make that change. But ultimately, you need to forecast your growth and fuel the fire before it starts to dwindle and there's nothing. So you need to always be looking forward when it comes to growing your business, and these two points really resonated with me. If Angelo had stopped when he was getting tired working at night, his business wouldn't be what it is today. If he wasn't starting to think forward-looking, you know, his business might not necessarily be where he wants it to be in a couple years. Just like us with the Ascend Summit, if we didn't continually take action, continually look forward, and always try to find ways to improve, then we wouldn't be where we are today. And I can tell you where we want to go, which we will get to, is just going to take that much more forethought, that much more time of putting in consistent, relentless effort, and you will eventually accomplish it. Hopefully you found something helpful from today's episode and, as always, we'll see you on the next one.