Built from the floor up.
Ascendant Advising Group wasn't started by someone who read about business. It was started by someone who built one — store by store, system by system, and under every kind of pressure imaginable.
Meet the Founder
Patrick Michaud didn't start his career behind a desk. He started it delivering sandwiches.
Within weeks of joining a Jimmy John's franchise as a delivery driver, he was promoted to assistant manager — and then promoted again. After corporate training, he was handed one of the worst-performing stores in the franchise and told to fix it. He did. Then they moved him to a busier store. He turned that one around too — into one of the top performers in the entire franchise.
Then came the busiest store… and COVID.
While most franchise locations around the country saw sales collapse, Patrick's store grew. It moved from outside the top 100 nationally to 15th in the country. He earned the best cost of goods sold in the nation and some of the highest audit scores from corporate. When the franchise promoted him to Area Manager — overseeing half the locations as the company scaled from one store to ten — it felt like the next logical step in a career he'd built with his hands.
Patrick spent years doing this — turning around failing stores, building systems that worked under pressure, developing people who went on to lead their own teams. He'd watched the big consulting firms come in, cut headcount, and call it strategy. He knew there was a better way, because he'd lived it. And he loved it.
So he built Ascendant Advising Group — a firm founded on the belief that real operational expertise, people-centered leadership, and sustainable growth aren't mutually exclusive. They're the only way forward.
Our
Values
What We Stand For
People Before Metrics
Sustainable performance comes from people who feel valued and clear on their purpose — not from squeezing more out of a depleted team.
Earned Credibility, Not Borrowed Authority
We don't lead with credentials. We lead with results — and we've earned them the hard way, inside real businesses under real pressure.
Honest Over Comfortable
We'll tell you what your business needs to hear — not what makes the engagement easier. That's what a real partner does.
Implementation Is The Strategy
A great plan that doesn't get executed isn't a strategy — it's a document. We stay in it with you until the work is actually done.
Ready To Work With Someone Who’s Been There?
