How Ascend Agency CEO Jonathan Jadali is Helping Startups Succeed

Learn this CEO’s “Three P'” strategy for successful brand building: Perception, Placement and Personality.

Amir Bakian

Presented by Ascend Agency 

The phrase “better to die than to live on with a bad reputation” has been proven to be increasingly true in today’s business climate. Reputation Management has become an obsession with most top brands. This only underlines the need for new brands to get their act right in building their brand reputation.

Jonathan Jadali is CEO of Ascend Agency, one of America’s leading PR and marketing firms. In his role as the head of Ascend Agency, he has helped countless new businesses find their feet fast and accelerate their development.

Jadali started Ascend Agency in the forefront of the Coronavirus pandemic and has grown it into a 6-figure yielding business that has built a very diverse client base from multi-industry startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Jadali has long shared his knowledge of how he has made so much progress in so little time and believes that aspiring entrepreneurs need to position themselves favorably on the internet. 

Here,  Jadali’s “3 P’s” to successful reputation and brand building:


The internet is the great leveler, there are no big and small companies anymore. In the age of the internet, if you seem big, then you are; it is all about perception and getting perceived the right way”.— Jonathan Jadali

From the day Ascend Agency launched, Jadali has helped startups launch and compete favorably with larger brands in their industries by enhancing their online reputation with the plethora of services that Ascend Agency provides. The strategy behind the company has been focused on getting businesses to “ascend” from where they are to where they dream of being.

Jadali is a firm believer that in today’s business climate, reputation is an essential foundational to success. In his words, “Your reputation is not everything you need to succeed, because you still need to back it up with excellent delivery. However, it does lay the foundation you need to come out roaring as a new business.

From setting up a website to content management, accounting, and even hiring, there are many amazing resources now available to startups at considerably lower costs than it would have been 10 years ago. The difference between how well businesses do in today’s business scene almost always results from their reputation management; this is what Jadali and Ascend Agency has focused on doing for brands over the last few years.


If I was referred for a software design contract by Floyd Mayweather, it would definitely carry some weight, but not nearly as much as it would if Bill Gates referred me… Reputation building revolves around placement, getting mentioned in the right places and by the right people.”—Jonathan Jadali

We have watched individuals grow their social media accounts tremendously by simply taking viral photos with celebrities. These individuals have gone on to become influencers and authorities on the internet. It is little wonder that Jadali has had so much success utilizing this strategy with Ascend Agency seeing as he also made his name as a social media influencer.

While many startups push for visibility by sponsoring guest posts and mentions on different publications that seem to present the required metrics, Ascend Agency has had great success by approaching article placements with a more empirical approach.

This approach emphasizes article placements in industry-relevant and high yield publications. In line with Jadali’s commitment to getting the best for his clients, Ascend Agency matches their clients with publications only after thorough research on the publications, engagement volume, industry relevance, and user base.

It is not enough to be spoken about a lot, if the relevant readers that can turn into paying customers are not listening.


If you are going to make a great impression as a new business, you need to lift the veil and let your audience become attracted to your personality, what you have underneath; that is what social media is for when used right.”Jonathan Jadali

There used to be a time when actors were required to maintain the mystery by keeping their personal lives away from public view so that their movies could sell. In the age of social media, everything has been turned on its head, the public won’t even be drawn to movies if they don’t feel like they know the actors beyond their characters.

We have evolved past the days when businesses could make do with having a “meet the team” section on their websites. While your brand should have a personality as part of its brand components, Jadali argues that it is also beneficial to have an actual person or people who encompass everything your brand stands for; people that are visible and that your customers can get to know and interact with.

Jadali describes the current business age as the “age of connection”. “We do not resonate well with machines and the best copy is even better when we know who is behind it… in this age of connection, your customers want to know you or your representative well enough to call you friend.

While many startups just want to pay for PR and get it done by someone else, Ascend Agency has helped guide many of their clients towards building organic audiences on social media by helping them develop and deploy appealing personalities. 

Some of these startups have grown over half a million followers and counting. Jadali believes that this arm of reputation building cannot be ignored because it is the “reputation management” arm…it is the only way you can continue building and managing your reputation in today’s world.

Jadali’s success story—going from an 18-year-old Bitcoin millionaire to a highly successful PR guru and social media expert—is due to his keen ability to distill his observation of human behavior into empirical data and his ability to develop that data into winning strategies utilized by brands and individuals alike.