From Surf Trips to UX Strategy: Why We Built HOLO (and Stopped Saying Yes to Everything).

When people hear Tennis, they still sometimes ask if we’re a sports brand.

We’re not. We’re a B2B website and product design and development agency based in Toronto, focused on UX design, product discovery, and digital transformation for marketing and product teams.

But the real origin story is even stranger: it began with surfing on the Great Lakes, a surf travel company, and two founders trying to run two completely different businesses simultaneously.

Over the last decade, that chaos turned into clarity: a focused UX and product design practice supported by a framework we call HOLO – Humans, Organization, Landscape, Objectives – and a “think before build” philosophy that now shapes every project we take on.

This post tells the story of how we arrived here, what we learned the hard way, and why we now make space for strategy before anyone opens Figma or writes a line of code.

The Early Days: Running Two Companies At Once

My background isn’t the classic “computer science → startup → VC” path.

• I studied technology and was always drawn to web and design.
• I worked in the print industry, managing retail campaigns for brands like Nike and a lingerie brand.
• I’ve always wanted to build something of my own.

Then one day, I found out you could surf on the lakes in Ontario. On one of my first sessions, I met my now-business partner, Symon, and another partner at the time. We started a surf travel company, running trips, spending long stretches in Costa Rica, building a consumer-facing brand that was genuinely fun to design for.

At the same time, we were also working on design and brand identity projects on the side. One of our first clients was a major children's hospital in Toronto.

So my life looked like this:

• 9–5 in telecom (at the time)
• 6–12 in our tiny office on Spadina
• Building a surf travel company and a design studio at the same time

By the end of that year, something had to give. Things were growing, but it was unsustainable. That’s when we made the first big decision:

Stop trying to grow two different companies with two different business models at once.

We exited the surf travel company and focused on what would eventually become Tennis (we were called ALSO Collective at the time).

Why We Stopped Being “Full Service” (And Why Focus Matters)

In the early years, we did what most digital agencies do:

“We can do that too.”

Websites, UX, branding, print, experiential, dev, a bit of everything. The work was exciting, but it came with a hidden cost: no real focus.

We later dove deep into experiential design UX, physical structures, fabrication, and real-time analytics for large conferences. One of our favourite projects was with Accenture: a massive interactive installation that tracked how attendees moved through a conference and visualized their experience in real time.

It was magical. It was also perilous for a small team:

• 3-month timelines from idea to execution
• Shipping steel structures between provinces
• Overnight setups and teardowns
• Live troubleshooting across multiple cities

Every time we took on one of those projects, it nearly derailed the rest of the business. It demanded 150% of our focus for months.

The pattern was obvious:

• Every new “capability” required new processes, tools, vendors, and learning curves.
• Saying yes to everything meant we were never world-class at anything.

A mentor once gave me an analogy that stuck:

You’re a great gardener, but a client asks if you can also do eavestroughs.

It’s the same house, same client, but now you need ladders, new tools, new safety knowledge, and new workflows. You end up diluting the thing you’re actually excellent at.

At some point, we had to accept:

We’re the gardener, not the all-purpose handyman.

That’s when we made two pivotal decisions:

1. Specialize in user experience design instead of trying to be “full service”.
2. Stop building a big in-house dev team and instead partner with specialized development firms while we went deep on UX strategy, discovery, and design systems.

The Real Problem: Clients Didn’t Have Time to Think

Even after we focused on UX design and product design, another problem kept surfacing:

We’d start a project and quickly realize:

• The client didn’t fully know what problem they were solving.
• The inputs were fuzzy (user types, business goals, workflows, constraints).
• And yet everyone wanted to move straight to design and development.

We were doing too much thinking and doing at the same time.

That affected everything:

• Project timelines
• Scope and cost
• The client’s experience
• And ultimately, the quality of the product or website

Clients often came to us with symptoms (“users are dropping off here”, “our teams hate the CMS”, “our onboarding is broken”), but not a clearly defined problem or strategy.

We needed a way to:

• Slow things down—on purpose
• Align business goals, user needs, and technical realities
• Document everything in a way that design and development could actually use

That’s where our HOLO framework was born.

Introducing HOLO: Humans, Organization, Landscape, Objectives

We refer our discovery phase as the Think Phase—a structured, front-loaded process that happens before we commit to design and build.

At the heart of that phase is HOLO:

H – Humans
O – Organization
L – Landscape
O – Objectives

It’s our UX discovery framework that we use across website and product engagements, whether we’re working with an enterprise team, a national association, or a scaling B2B SaaS company.

Here’s what each part covers.

1. Humans

Who are we designing for, really?

• Internal users (admins, content authors, operations teams, leadership)
• External users (customers, members, partners, donors, applicants)
• How they think, what they need, where they get stuck

We map user tiers, priorities, and workflows, and start to see where friction and opportunity live across the journey.

2. Organization

What does success look like for the business?

• Strategic goals and KPIs
• Operational realities (capacity, governance, internal ownership)
• Constraints (legal, compliance, budget, technology stack)

This is where we align leadership, marketing, product, and IT around a shared definition of success—critical for any serious digital transformation initiative.

3. Landscape

What world are we launching into?

• Competitive and comparative analysis
• Industry norms and emerging patterns
• Technical landscape: current systems, data flows, integrations

We’re asking: What already exists? Where can we differentiate? Where do we absolutely have to meet or exceed expectations?

4. Objectives

What exactly are we building and why?

This is where we pull it all together into:

• Clear product or website objectives
• Prioritized feature sets and workflows
• A roadmap that balances quick wins with long-term scalability

Out of HOLO comes something non-negotiable for us:

A Product Requirements Document (PRD) that captures strategy, architecture, user flows, and functional requirements before design begins.

We do not proceed with the design until the PRD is completed and agreed upon.

It’s not just process for process’s sake—it’s how we:

• Reduce rework and technical debt
• De-risk new web and product development
• Keep teams aligned through design, development, and optimization

Why We “Force” Clients to Take Time to Think

Most teams say they value strategy.

But when deadlines loom, strategy is often the first thing on the chopping block.

After years of seeing rushed discovery turn into expensive rework, we made a deliberate shift:

We now build time for thinking into the engagement itself—and we protect it.

For some clients that feels uncomfortable at first. They want wireframes and UI yesterday. But once they experience:

• A clear roadmap for their website or product,
• Better alignment between stakeholders,
• And smoother collaboration with their dev teams,

They see HOLO not as a delay, but as an accelerator.

It also helps qualify clients:

• If a team isn’t willing to invest the time to think, they’re often not ready for the scale of change they believe they want.
• Saying “no” early protects both sides from painful, misaligned projects.

Who We Work Best With (And Who We Turn Away)

Over time, patterns emerged around fit.

We do our best work with:

• Enterprise organizations (500+ employees)
• Mid-market teams in the ~100–500 employee range
• Associations, nonprofits, and VC-backed startups that behave like mid-market in terms of budget and sophistication

These organizations usually have:

• Clear business goals
• Internal champions for UX, accessibility, and digital transformation
• Enough data, insight, and appetite to make discovery genuinely helpful

Where we’re more cautious:

• Sub-50-person companies that want big-ticket, complex UX or product work but don’t yet have the structure, time, or internal ownership to support it
• Teams looking for a single partner to do “everything”—SEO, paid media, branding, dev, support, product, content, all at once

Nothing against small teams—we work with some and love it. But we now do far more due diligence before we commit. For a small organization, one mis-scoped digital project can be a much heavier risk.

The Shift from Generalist to Specialist (On Purpose)

The broader market is changing too.

There was a time when hiring a “full-service digital agency” felt like the safe choice: one partner, one invoice, one relationship.

But under the hood, many of those agencies:

• Are truly excellent at one or two things, and
• Only “okay” at the rest—often outsourcing or white-labeling capabilities with markups

We’ve chosen the opposite:

• Go deep on UX strategy, product design, and web design.
• Build specialist partnerships for development and complementary services.
• Invest heavily in design systems, accessibility, and operations-driven tools that make digital platforms easier to own long-term.

That level of specialization makes us a better partner for marketing and product teams who are tired of fragmented experiences and opaque processes.

Being a Founder, a Parent, and a Human (All at Once)

On paper, this article is about UX design and process.

In reality, a lot of these decisions were driven by something more personal:

• I’m not just a founder. I’m also a husband and a dad to two very young kids.
• I don’t have the luxury of 18-hour days anymore.
• Every new “service line” doesn’t just cost money—it costs time, attention, and stress.

Focus stopped being just a strategy question and became a quality-of-life question.

• Fewer random bets, more considered moves
• Fewer “sure, we can do that too”, more “this is what we’re truly excellent at”
• More intention around where we deploy our energy—for clients and for our team

That’s also why things like measurement matter so much now:

What gets measured gets managed.

Whether it’s revenue, lead quality, UX metrics, accessibility scores, or just how often we’re pulled into chaos, we try to track it. Otherwise you can’t tell if you’re actually moving towards your big, hairy, audacious goals, or just staying busy.

Where We’re Going Next

We’re still evolving. Some of the things on my mind right now:

• Deeper industry focus – We work across many verticals, but we’re actively looking at where we’ve had the most impact and may niche down further so our messaging and sales strategy can be sharper.
• Scaling our sales team – Likely segmenting by industry rather than geography so each rep can truly understand their space.
• Re-integrating more development leadership in-house – Not to become a giant dev shop, but to better protect design intent and reduce friction between UX and engineering.
• Exploring acquisitions – Long-term, I see a path where we grow not only organically but by bringing smaller specialist teams into the Tennis ecosystem when the fit is right.

The north stars for us are agencies like Konrad Group, Rangle, and Fantasy—teams that have grown by combining deep craft, strong systems, and a clear point of view on digital.

Will we follow the same path? Probably not. However, they serve as proof that you can build something substantial while maintaining a focus on quality.

If You’re a Marketing or Product Leader, Here’s the Takeaway

You don’t have to adopt HOLO or our exact process. But here are a few principles that will save you a lot of pain in web and product design:

1. Don’t skip discovery.
   If you’re not giving yourself time to think, align, and document before design, you’re not reducing risk—you’re just deferring it.
2. Get brutally clear on who you’re for.
   Industry, size, maturity, and internal capacity all play a role. Your product won’t be for everyone, and that’s a good thing.
3. Separate symptoms from problems.
   “Our site is ugly” is a symptom. “We can’t support our content strategy in this CMS without developer help” is closer to the real problem.
4. Specialize where it counts.
   The web is too complex for shallow generalism. You can find partners who excel in the specific area you need, then build a small ecosystem of specialists.
5. Protect your own quality of life.
   Whether you’re a founder, a CMO, or a product leader, the way you structure your digital work has a direct impact on your stress, your team, and your ability to build things you’re proud of.