Sonja Pomerleau is the COO and co-owner of Next Level Now, a fractional CFO and finance firm based in New England that has grown from five employees to 40 over the past decade. The company provides embedded, CFO-led finance teams — primarily serving managed service providers (MSPs) — and recently underwent a leadership transition when Sonja and CEO Brandi Bonds purchased the firm from its founder.
Next Level Now has been running on EOS for about five years and migrated from Ninety to Strety in mid-2025. The team now uses Strety as both their internal EOS software and their practice management system across 50+ client teams.
Tell us about Next Level Now and what you do there.
Next Level Now has been around for over 20 years. The firm started as a fractional CFO company — CFOs dropping in to help small and mid-sized businesses in New England. Brandi Bonds joined 11 years ago as a CFO and really had a knack for growth.
A few years in, they moved to a team approach, hiring controllers and accountants, because the CFO’s job was really stymied at the strategic level without the ability to execute the blocking and tackling of finance. We created teams where each of our financial professionals is a full-time employee at Next Level Now, and the teams then embed with our clients.
The company has grown from just five or six people to over 40. In December 2025, Brandi and I bought the company from our founder, Ken Peterson, who is still involved as a CFO in the field — so that’s a whole new chapter. I came in two and a half years ago to drive sales, marketing, and our verticalized approach into the IT MSP market. Our offering is CFO-led finance teams that are embedded with our clients. Fractional is a bit of a dirty word in our industry, because we’re not giving fractional support — we give you a whole team. And our people know the MSP market and the PSA systems.
What was your experience with EOS prior to joining Next Level Now?
Before this, I was at a software VAR for 13 years. I ran sales teams of up to a dozen people and helped grow the company from under a million to twelve and a half million over 12 years.
Transparently, it was a really toxic environment, and the only thing that kept me there that long was EOS. We’d found EOS about eight years ago. There were no software systems — Ninety didn’t exist, Strety definitely didn’t exist. We used an Excel sheet for our L10s and had way too many data points on our Scorecards. It was rough. But even with all that, I really understand the journey of going through EOS and seeing the benefit of the culture improving when you understand where you’re going and you don’t let all the noise happen.
What moved you from Ninety over to Strety?
When we were on Ninety at NLN, we were really only using it for our leadership meeting and maybe some of the L10s, but we weren’t using it much beyond that.
One of our controllers was with a client that was using Strety, and she brought it to Brandi and said, “This is awesome. It’s so much better looking and easier to use.”
We migrated mid-year. It was seamless — we just did it ourselves. We didn’t even know Strety had migration services. We didn’t want to bring over junk, so we just brought in open Issues. The user-friendliness of it was noticed right away, and the usage exploded.
Why do you think usage of EOS/the software exploded when you moved from Ninety.io to Strety?
As we got into Strety, we realized it could be our practice management system. Before that, we’d been through a bunch of different iterations for managing client work. The last one was Microsoft Planner — it has the Gantt chart and the Kanban, but no one adopted it. It was kludgy at best. It was hard to let our clients into it because they’re not in our environment, and that was a whole 365 security nightmare. We realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to work.
With Strety, because we’re so embedded with our clients, it works perfectly for client management. We can set up external users, assign their employees tasks, comment back and forth. The security and permissioning is really clear — you can see exactly what people have access to.
Plus, since our customers run on EOS for the most part, they immediately grasp the way we set things up for them with Rocks, Scorecards, Issues, and L10 meetings.
How is your Strety setup organized with that many clients?
If you look at our Strety, you’re going to see 50-plus teams. We use it for internal teams and for every client. I use it for our marketing — our marketing coordinator and I hold our weekly L10 on it. I don’t send her emails anymore. I put things into Strety and she gets her notifications. She loves it. Some of our clients have their own Strety, and that’s fine, but we still have our own for our internal team. We have internal teams, and then we have a team for each client, all in one place.
Can you walk through how Strety fits into the actual client work — like how you use Rocks with your clients?
It really starts from when we’re in the discovery process. I’m our main salesperson, and I deliver a statement of work that’s really an EOS-style delivery — here are the Rocks, here are the things we’re going to do in the first quarter, second quarter, and beyond.
When we set up the client in Strety, we take those and chunk them into Rocks supported by tasks and To-Dos. For a new client, an accountant’s Rock might be “assume all bookkeeping duties except procurement from the existing bookkeeper.” On the CFO side, it’s things like “create the financial model and analyze profitability by service segment to optimize pricing.” For a controller, it could be “implement a monthly close process with a target of 10 business days or less.” We even have Rocks like “secure three solid candidates for a COO search this quarter” — because our CFOs are on the leadership team and helping drive strategy.
How do you use Strety to support your internal company culture and performance?
Our compensation plan has a generous base with a quarterly bonus percentage tied to four factors. Two are company-level — our gross profit and EBITDA. The other two are based in Strety.
One is hitting a certain percentage of Rock and task completion — we set it at 85%, we don’t expect perfect. We know Rocks move, especially when the client is dependent on delivery. The other is completing your personal and client Rocks.
That drives the behavior of adopting Strety. It was our thinking that if we just get people using it and tracking completion, the adoption follows, and it’s worked exactly like that.
What are the biggest differences your team has noticed using Strety?
People like it, and we’re seeing increased adoption. We do micro-trainings every week or two — Strety for managers, Strety for clients — and people are getting into it. The transparency is there. Our people deal with a lot of email noise because it’s the nature of the job, and having a different channel to look at things in a different way helps prioritize. They don’t see 500 emails and freeze up thinking, “I don’t know what to do.”
I feel the same way. Even though I’m not in the field with them, I can go over and just see my To-Dos, and it calms me down a little bit. People’s stress levels are a little lower because they can visualize what they really need to do.
Tell us about those micro-trainings. How do you run them?
That’s Brandi’s thing — she’s our CEO and the training guru. She builds out the content and keeps the training to about 20 minutes, because we have so many meetings that we try really hard not to over-meet people. We don’t badger people to join. If you can make it, great — and we record everything.
We do tips and tricks and how Strety should be used. And it’s not just Brandi teaching. We have CFOs and controllers who run really effective L10s model for the group. Having other people in the company train has been great. We also do cultural training around L10s — for some international team members especially, culturally it can be harder to speak up. We’ve trained on how to politely say, “Let’s make an Issue for that — we’re off track.” Press that tangent button. And it’s not just for them — it’s for everyone.
How have effective L10s changed things for your team?
An effective L10 changes the culture of the organization. We get through an agenda, and if I’ve got 10 minutes left, I’m like, “Let’s go — everyone leave. We don’t need to sit here.” It makes meetings shorter and definitely more valuable.
You mentioned you’re also using Playbooks. What does that look like?
We’re really trying hard to operationally mature ourselves, and that means documenting and getting things out of people’s heads.
We’re using Strety Playbooks as the place where you can see everything. We’ve got training and development for new employees, onboarding new clients, even the holiday schedule. It’s kind of become our HR and client onboarding SOP area.
Most of your MSP clients are already running on EOS. What do you think makes the difference when a company gets a dedicated implementer?
It’s the accountability. When you pay for it, you’re taking it seriously, and the accountability skyrockets because someone is holding you to it and leading you — not just coming along for the ride.
In my last job, I didn’t really understand the driving that can happen when you use an implementer who’s outside the organization. Especially when you have a strong-willed leader, it’s hard for anyone inside to stand up and say, “This is insane. What are you doing to your people?” When you’re in it that deep, you lose touch of reality.
It’s invaluable to have an outside coach. And that’s kind of where we step in with our clients. We’re from Boston — we’re going to tell you that your baby is ugly, and we’re going to fix your books. You’re working with us because you know you have a problem, and we’re going to make it better with you.