This week on the Building Interest Podcast, we are joined by Andy Zambito, the Chief Sales Officer for Creatio, a passionate leader, environmentalist and avid scuba diver. Andy shares his insights into setting goals, building trust within your team, and maintaining a positive corporate culture. 

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Episode Transcript

Greg Farber: 
Whether you're seeking inspiration, wisdom or a fresh perspective on leadership and entrepreneurship, the Building Interest podcast has you covered. Together, we uncover the stories behind the success of groundbreaking leaders, the triumphs, the challenges and the invaluable lessons they learned along the way. Our discussions go beyond strategic decision making and delve into the personal hobbies and passions that keep these leaders inspired and grounded in their work. I'm your host, Greg Farber. Let's jump right in. So today, we're joined by Andy Zambito, the Chief Sales Officer for Creatio, a passionate leader in both business and personal ventures. Welcome, Andy.

Andy Zambito: 
Well, thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here.

Greg Farber: 
It is exciting. For those listeners who may not even know and we don't want to spend a ton of time on this. But I'm just curious if you could just give a quick run through of kind of what is Creatio? And why is that such an important relationship for us to have as a community bank?

Andy Zambito:   
Wow. Well, that's that's a yeah, it's not a short answer in the sense of all that we do. But in a nutshell, Creatio is leading the way in what's considered the no code revolution. So the ability for organizations to build their experiences, if you will, without the need for development of any kind. And this is for automating their processes, for any of the things that would actually help you be more efficient. And on top of that, we've also built one of the world's leading CRM solutions to accelerate that digital transformation. And we're grateful to be a partner.

Greg Farber:
Awesome. Well, thanks for that. So talking to you, you have an impressive background, you've been at a number of different organizations, held a number of different positions. And really most of it has been kind of in combination of either sales or technology for the last 25 years or so. How did you first get into that? What drew you into that kind of work? Did you did you always know you had a passion for it just kind of fell into it, or?

Andy Zambito:   
Well, I wouldn't say fell into I definitely always had a passion for it. I think I took a circuitous route to get here. And my my first kind of young man career passion was to do a career in the military. And I pursued that vigorously went to the military academy and decided I didn't want to do a 30 year career. And at that point, I immediately looked at, you know, this was the heyday of technology and finance together. And so I pursued an MBA in Investment Finance, and was going to pursue that route. And also became a little bit disillusioned with with that as my going forward life. So I found myself in a position where I said, I know I want to be close to tech. I don't know exactly what the best course for me is going to be. So then I did another year as an you know, even an underwriter for high tech industry, you know, insuring them. And I was desperate to find a better fit. I fortunately, found a recruiter who was looking for somebody with a very unique background, which included finance and risk and high tech together. And that was my first opportunity to jump at that now. You dated me a little bit with the years. So in the earliest stages, it was still custom technology, of which, you know, I was working on and doing sales and business development. And then quickly around the around the turn of the millennium, went toward the enterprise software. And from then, my entire career has been focused on the sales side of technology.

Greg Farber: 
Awesome. Yeah. And my apologies if I dated you, but I've been in this banking mortgage that was originally in the mortgage side banking space for well over 25 years myself. So yeah, we're definitely on the on the same, I think, dating ourselves there. So let's get right into it. Right? I mean, we're talking about leadership, we're talking about entrepreneurship and kind of the person you've developed into over all these years. Can you share kind of some leadership principles that you developed and maybe how they evolved, or maybe there was a specific challenge that that caused you to, to have a new strategy that turned into a leadership principle for you?

Andy Zambito:   
There are a number of these we can go down and so stop me at any point. But you know, as I mentioned about the military academy, I will say that there are some extreme foundational elements I think of who I am or how I operate that definitely come out of that area. And, you know, some of these and if you've ever worked on a team with me, you'll hear some of these expressions still today, right? So, in that environment, I very much took on the the persona of I won't ask a team to do something that I wouldn't do myself, couldn't do, and and haven't pursued. So it's very much a leadership from the from the front perspective. Additionally, there were some foundational elements just character building ones I think play into the leadership. When you when you first join, you're given three responses. Yes, sir. No, sir. And no excuse, sir. And the no excuse one, essentially. So all of us in our lives and I think, you know, as we look at things around us when something seems difficult, or we hit a challenge, or we're juggling too many things, you know, we have all the reasons why it's not done well enough, or why it gets deprioritized and the rest. And what this forces you to learn is that either you did it or didn't, right? It's not I did it halfway, and that should count. Right? So this no excuse kind of mentality has been a driving force, for me, in a lot of ways, and as colored my, my perspective of constantly trying to drive, you know, teams and in groups forward. There's always a limit to- there's always one more thing you can do. Right? Whenever you think you're out of option, there's always one more thing, you can just keep pushing.

Greg Farber: 
No, I really liked what you said about leadership from the front also, and we've had a lot of different guests on and I've come across a lot of different leaders, managers, in my own career and things. But something that you said there really struck me as something that's relevant, and I think our listeners should kind of latch on to is this idea that you're not going to ask someone to do something you wouldn't do? Right? It is so prevalent, sometimes, if you have a manager that wouldn't themselves be willing to do the work, the folks behind aren't as likely to follow the leader.

Andy Zambito:   
I agree. And it's- I've seen good leadership and bad leadership, right? And you know, both can get an outcome. And particularly if you're leading through purely like fear and intimidation, or the loss of your job, or whatever it might be, but what I learned early on was that will only get you the bare minimum from your, from your team. Whereas if if you are on the more inspiring side, or aspiring side, whichever way you want to look at that, the teams will, you know, go through walls for you, because they don't want to let you down because they know how hard you're working. So for me, you know, maybe it's been, you know, some people have a different sense of work life balance, I have that. But I also kind of shared early on with folks that, you know, when you look at how much time you spend with work, you have to also acknowledge and the work people, you have to acknowledge that this is a little bit of a lifestyle, it's not just a, you know, in our level of careers, it's not a nine to five thing. And so I'm always available to the team there. When we have a challenge, I think it does stem back to some of the military things is you need to be mission focused. So when the team comes to me with a challenge, we're having a hard time at this deal. The first, you know, instincts need to be how do I get out of the ditch, and get us all moving toward the objective? Again, before we stopped, then how you know, we don't stop right there first and say how could you get in the ditch? What how do you do all these things? So wrong? How did you get there, I guess we know we're gonna have to address those things. But if your mission focused, and you're, you know, that hands dirty lead from the front leadership, that the team will see this, and they'll have no choice but to follow or self identify that this isn't the environment for them. So when I've spent a lot of my career in earlier stage companies and growing companies, for me, that's a big, personal rewarding bit. But it's there easier ways to make money then be a part of building a brand, building a company building a business. And if they don't, if the if the the folks that teammates don't associate value these things and see those efforts, then these are the things you also need to look at. But for me, I share with all the leaders that come on board working for me and with me that yes, you need to be hands dirty, you need to demonstrate that you're not above the the work you need, they need to know that they can count on you when it gets into a ditch. Not only that, you know what and how to do in my profession in sales and maybe different for other lines of work too, it's very easy to figure out if you look at other leaders, whether they are they are adding value for their teams, because that's my number one determination of leaders, are you adding value? Are you having impact? If their calendar is full of their team looking for their time, they're adding value, if they're trying to avoid interacting with their leader than that it's the opposite. So some of these things are pretty self evident too.

Greg Farber: 
Definitely. And you talk about a lot of these sort of positive things and working together. How do you approach combining that with a culture of entrepreneurship, where when you're in sales, you can't keep selling the same stale thing, right? Because eventually, you'll have sort of a saturated customer base, there's always got to be some new direction that you're going. How do you how do you work? How do you work entrepreneurship into that same culture that you were just talking about the hands on the support?

Andy Zambito:   
Well, technology moves extremely fast. And so for instance, if a leader came over to me I just hired him or her and they said I just came from this place and here's everything I did you And I just want to do it all over again, that's not going to work. The first one is not evidence based, but the market, the competition, everything moves. It's not just about saturating your customer base, we should all be so lucky that that's the challenge, right? But there's new entrants, there's new competition. If I'm competing with you, every day, and I keep hitting you in your soft spot, you're either going to armor that soft spot, or you're going to shift and move away. And so that's that punch is no longer going to land. So we're constantly in need, in our profession of that real time feedback, right? We got to get that telemetry from the market and our teams on the front line, our sellers, are the number one avenue for that they're the ones actually, you know, throwing the message downrange and hearing back what comes back from from the field and what's landing and what's not. And why, as well as observing net new opportunities for us. Hey we thought about this, we thought about that. So you foster that by creating an environment where you first don't start from a posture that says I have it all figured out. And that it's this is how it's always going to be and we're going to do it just that way. It doesn't mean that. And this is a big leadership point for me. And I think in our organization, it's not that you're always going to agree, right? When we have meetings, and we talk about the feedback, and we talk about things we're going to do. It's not okay, are we all agreed, and then we leave the room because you're not always going to agree. And in an environment where you don't have that and people bring ideas and they get shot down arbitrarily and all the rest, you can breed that resentment and you know, other things. But we do. So I take the idea away from there, it was it was this was this was Greg's idea, and it didn't work. And I don't really care about making it work. And now I can prove that you see, Greg, you were wrong. As opposed to what we focus on his alignment. Right? So are we aligned? So we've talked about all the items we've we've played out the merits of them, we can make quick, important decisions on that. We're not afraid to say later if it was bad, we don't say this was Greg's idea, and we're just gonna run it. We say this is all well, we all aligned on this. We all contributed. We're all agreeing, we're gonna leave the room. We don't have to all agree it's perfect. But this is what we're aligned on. Now. Everybody has personal ownership. That's the plan.

Greg Farber: 
I'm disappointed that you didn't like my idea, though.

Andy Zambito:   
Sometimes not- look I'm not a believer that every idea is a good one, right? But if but you want ever you want to hear them all and you want to to have that. And then, it also allows you to pivot because now it's not- it wasn't that this was Greg. Now Greg looks bad. And we're going to shift to you know, Sally's idea. It's, we did what we all thought was we aligned on and now it didn't work the way to the level we want, we're going to try the next thing on the list. And we have to be constantly adjusting in this space. And we have to for the firms that I've worked for, it's also about and especially here at Creati o. It's about leading the market. Right? You, if you are only doing the ideas that everybody else already likes, then you're not leading. It's you know, it's only impossible until it's been done. And then everybody's like, well, we can now do that.

Greg Farber:
Exactly. And that's that entrepreneurship I was going for. And I think another thing that sort of springs from that is every day, we're all inundated with surveys, you order food, there's a survey, how was it you take your car in for an oil change, you get a survey, how was it? But the differentiator is that some companies actually listen, right? Not. And the consumer kind of feels like oh, well, the companies don't listen, they don't care what I say in the feedback. But if a company actually listens to that feedback, like you said, then you can take that and you can turn that around, and transform that idea into something that is gonna go better.

Andy Zambito: 
You absolutely have to have a culture that inspires the idea that these ideas will be will at least be received doesn't mean they all have to be executed. But if you're in a mindset, or a model, where it's like, we have a cash cow, it's not broken, don't fix it, then that's fine. But it's not entrepreneurial. Right? Entrepreneurial is breaking new glass. And so it has to be questioning and challenging and pushing, it doesn't mean all and many ideas will be bad, but you still want to understand the universe of of what are we thinking about. And you want to be able to have room for experimentation. So if your environment is one where you don't even have a carved off little area that you can try something new, then that's that's a challenge, right? Because now it means you've you've built institutional and you've built some firm walls up around, allowing that to, to even come forth.

Greg Farber: 
And you know that that actually is a perfect segue into another thing I wanted to ask you. You know, we all first when we first start out in a role, we might have certain habits processes, kind of like think of it like training wheels when someone learns to ride a bike, right? And ultimately, we all hopefully all, learn how to balance without the training wheels, but then there's this fear of taking them off. And if I take them off, what if I fall? And so do you have any advice that you can share from your career maybe about things that leaders should stop doing, that are kind of like training wheels, they rely on it too much? And they could do so much more if they just ditched those habits and took the training wheels off and trusted themselves to move forward.

Andy Zambito: 
Yeah, well, first of all, it's even interesting when he talks about training wheels, right? So I have a I have a young toddler now. And, you know, when back in our generation, yeah, you use the training wheels, and but that unto itself was probably part of the problem. Right? So they've even rethought training wheels. And so now they have balanced bikes as an example, as opposed to a jump straight to the finish. And so I think you're saying what could a leadership leaders like maybe stop doing? Well, I shared some of it stop thinking that you have all the answers, or the answers are only going to come top down, you know, and look into your organization for who's really hearing the right things. Now, I'm a big believer of putting the pain where it belongs. And what I mean by that is, oftentimes, look my organization can be guilty of this too, right? One of our core values is genuine care. So we genuinely care about our clients in their solution. And we put that first, and we care about each other and how we operate and work, you know, and organize. And that helps us drive our business forward. But where, where it can go wrong, right is in the sense of, if I care about, okay, well, you're a little, you're a little stressed on this, I'm not going to ask you to do this thing, and then you're not you're going to pass this along down the chain. And then we come up with a substandard result, because everybody kind of shaved back just a little bit, if you're trying to so what I've, you know, kind of pushed into this is, if you're, if you're really trying to drive the machinery forward at that level, it's not a matter of protecting that area from too much stress or strain. It's a matter and there's two parts of this is pushing that area and saying, 'Okay, now we know where we have to address the issue,' because we mask our issues in these small areas over and over because we compound them across the board, as opposed to realizing no, if if this department had more resources than we could, this would not this would go away.

Greg Farber: 
So instead of sort of covering up the problem by dialing back and not addressing that maybe you don't have enough resources or training or whatever the situation might be. Reinforce that underlying foundation so that the next time around, the stress level isn't as high and they can complete the entire job rather than maybe just a shave down portion of it.

Andy Zambito: 
Let the pain go through the funnel, right? As opposed to trying to stop a little bit along the way and have everybody have just a little bit less, find where your actual break is.

Greg Farber: 
Is that demoralizing along the way or does that end up lifting people up?

Andy Zambito: 
No, it actually well, it actually identifies it quicker, because in a situation where everybody's feeling a little bit of the pain and not knowing where and why that's actually can be a little bit demoralizing. As soon as we you identify, oh, it's Andy's team, they need you know, three more people of this kind and we could get the throughput we need. Well, let's get Andy those people now. My team would feel better, because they've got more resources, your team would feel better because they get the outcome. It's the same kind of mind shift of we often are given goals and targets we have to hit. And we start with a mindset of what what can we do with inside of what we have, in order to best deliver on that result. As opposed to kind of flipping the equation and looking at it at it, you know differently as change the target and the goal, right? Create the cognitive dissonance the other way and say, I want to make a much bigger goal, what would I need? Not what do I have to work from? What would I what would I need in that environment? And change the model. It's like if you said, you want to do whatever, $10 million in sales, and this is all the resources you have? How would the best way you would you deploy them is a challenge to address. But if you said what did we want to do 100 million? What would you need to do that? How do we structure differently? What would you, this this inspires entrepreneurial thinking. And, and I pride our leadership here and our CEO from for driving this, we do strategic offsites regularly and and challenge these these areas. And it creates a very different answer. Well, if we structured differently, and we had this and that, then we'd be able to drive towards that is a much more entrepreneurial and faster driving way than just always thinking that we have constrained resources, accepting those constraints and doing the best we can and inside of that is one of the things we challenge people on in the software world. Because we've been so conditioned to have broken software, right, that doesn't do all these things. You come in with a brilliant idea, right? How many times this happened to you probably? Somebody comes in, says everybody around the table, we've got something great we want to do. And everybody comes around the table and all the hands go up for why they can't do it. It'll take too long. It'll cost too much. You can't touch those fields. That's, you know, Fred's and, you know, whoever it might be right, is going to get concerned. And so then you finally say, What can I do within these constraints? And everybody just kind of deflates a little bit and you're like, what's better than not doing anything? Entrepreneurial would say change that mindset. And instead of all the reasons why it couldn't say what are all the things that would have to be in place, or would have to change in order to be able to support this idea, because this is the idea that's going to take the organization to the next place?

Greg Farber:
I think that's really well said, and there's a lot of analogy for that at Leader Bank. We're a little over 20 years old, started from zero and are a $4 billion institution. That didn't happen because someone set low level goals, that happened because someone set goals that seemed absolutely ludicrous at the time. And then we found a way to get there. Like you said, you have to kind of figure out how are you going to get there, even if on the onset, it seems ridiculous. And then you look back after you achieve it, and maybe it wasn't that ridiculous. After all.

Andy Zambito:   
It's just problem solving. And we're conditioned to problem solve within the conditions were given. So you have to break those boundaries of that, of that condition. And then and see and, and eventually, right? You might say, like, 'Okay, we've hit a limit, because I can't change any more conditions, or we just can't make that happen.' But now you're already in a different place than you would have been, if you just accepted that those all those things were in place. And you may not always be the change these things. But then at least you know, and the team knows, if I say no, you can't, I can't do that for you. I don't have another resource. Okay. But then we are we know that we're doing our absolute best. Outside of that we're not, we're just by definition, we're not. We're doing well. But we're not doing our absolute best.

Greg Farber: 
So that's a lot, obviously of good advice in there and things. And now I wonder if I've already sort of answered where I was gonna go next.

Andy Zambito:   
I don't know.

Greg Farber:
Your company Creatio was recently named to be one of the top places to work by the Boston Globe, ranked very highly, in fact. Congratulations.

Andy Zambito:   
Thank you.

Greg Farber: 
And my question was going to be about kind of what's the secret sauce to get there and how to maintain a positive workplace culture and things. And culture is something we've focused on a lot at the Bank as well, to make sure that we have, you know, the creative force and the entrepreneurial force to continue driving forward. I feel like you've kind of already given me some of the secrets to the success just in the way that you've answered some of these other questions. Do you think there's a larger overarching sort of plan or culture or structure in place at Creatio that that is part of that success?

Andy Zambito: 
What we have? So I think it's important to look, there's the expression, right? That culture trumps strategy, right? Every day, right? So you have to, you have to have a strong sense of what the culture for you is. And for us, we have our five core values, and some of them are things like one team, right. So we are all one team. And that means that our leadership, as I mentioned, is visibly, hands on, right is visibly in the weeds. It's not a disconnected leadership, where they don't understand all the challenges we may be facing in the trenches or anything. No, they're standing next to you saying what supplies do you need, let's reinforce. And then, you know, for us, for example, I think that when you, if you're mission driven, versus just something that's just being an organization that's hitting and trying to hit goals and targets, right? We want to grow or something else, if you actually are mission driven. It can be-

Greg Farber: 
Let me ask you right there, just for our listeners, can you separate the difference in your mind of a mission versus a goal?

Andy Zambito: 
There are organizations who, and it's not disparaging, right? And especially if they've been around for a while, right, they've kind of hit their their groove, and they're in their track. And they're looking at this every year, we're trying to grow a little bit. And let's all contribute towards that is very different than the entrepreneurial mindset that you shared, which is, and then that this is really about is, you know, and when I think of leadership and entrepreneurs, you need your mission to be big and clear. Right? What is your purpose? Why why do you exist? Why another entity like yours? And if that's clear, that's a core starting point. I encourage people when they look to join an organization to think of two things first, and I think everything else is noise. Do you believe in the mission and vision of the organization? Because that's the Northstar. Right, the moment everything goes crazy. Everybody gets busy. Are we all rallying to the same place? And we all believe in it? That-

Greg Farber: 
If you're whatever level you're at, if you understand the mission, you're more engaged, and you're a better participant in furthering that, that company strategy.

Andy Zambito: 
And the other thing they always tell you, right, is that if you don't if you don't feel if you don't feel personally, that your work contributes towards that, then you disconnect anyway. So one part is knowing it. Another part is understanding that what I do contributes to that so now I'm a real contributing factor. And the second part I tell people is do you believe you're surrounding yourself with people that can execute on that vision? Because we've all seen companies with great vision, but they don't do the right things, hire the right people, operate the right ways, and they can fail. Outside of those two things, everything else I consider is noise. Because it's all going to change, you know, for a sales rep, what's my comp? What's my territory? What's my product said, all these things are gonna change every day. And it's less relevant. If you're doing the right things, then all the right things happen for you. But what is the organization doing? And so we, I think that's a big part of it. And I think some organizations confused like, is it a is it a happy place to work? Is it like, is it are people having fun? Are we bringing you know, when I was out in Silicon Valley, for years, it was all about you want to hire engineers? It's, you know, how good is your kitchen? How often are you bringing in meals? Is there a massage chair on Wednesday kind of thing? And, and that was kind of how they evaluated was it gonna be a good work environment? Because they really, I'm coding here, I'm coding somewhere else kind of thing. Like, that's what I'll do. That's not super inspiring. Right? And, okay, great. You've got a great break room, and you've got all these fun activities. That can be fun. But for us, for instance, fun is taking that step towards our goal. Fun is our engineering team declaring that they wanted to be the leaders in this no code movement that isn't even fully established out in the marketplace. And here we go. Two weeks ago, three weeks ago, we're the only leader in Forrester's first wave towards doing this, beating out the world's largest software organizations. And their motto, they didn't just sit back and celebrate, they said, amazing. And they set the next goal. That's fun, and it's rewarding. And it's personal, and it's connecting. And when you feel a part of that, and you feel that your activities matter, no matter how many employees you have in the organization, I think that becomes a place that you want to work. Every organization has challenges.

Greg Farber: 
Now your example is is a big example. Because obviously you just said you're beating out or trying to beat out a major competitor or thing. But how do you communicate that mission criticality that every every, every role matters, right? Every contribution matters. When it's things on a much smaller scale. When it's not, Oh, I see We achieved this huge goal and I was a part of it. Everybody can be proud of that. How can you be part- How can you foster pride in the smaller events that happen throughout the day the lifestyle lifespan of a worker.

Andy Zambito:   
So firstly, you have to have clarity and repeatability of these messages. But then, you know, transparency, as well so and celebrate, share the stories. So I have a weekly team meeting where one of the things I just ask is share all the kinds of things that you've learned or happened or what you've experienced for this week. So for others to see that we have global team meetings, we have all hands meetings, and we do these with regularity. And we even have, you know, in order to carry kind of gratitude and our attitude, if you will, at the end of every all hands, we have the part where is thank yous and people thanking other parts and you know, people and, and it could be somebody who only controls one little widget and gets paperwork out. But that person was there for me, and it made all the difference. We highlight these things. And we and it's, you know, one of our favorite parts of these, these sessions. So I think, you know, it ties back to something we talked about earlier, right? If you have an environment where input is received, whether you act on it or not. In fact, you don't want to act on all of it, because they want to know, even if I brought forth an idea, I don't want to know you just took it because I brought it forward. It has to stand on its merits. It's kind of like a, it's also demotivating. If you have non performers and you drag them along, right, if you carry if you want organization full full of what I call force multipliers, people who make everybody else better by by being a part of that. They don't operate well in an environment where the opposite is, is there as well. So if you have this environment, where you reinforce we, this is what we, this is our goal and our mission, and it's big. And if you want to be a part of that you can be. And when you're a part of that, and you contribute, it's acknowledged and rewarded and the best ideas will rise. And when things don't work, we'll reset and do them. And it's not kind of finger pointing or anything of that. All of these things, I think, contribute. And again, having that active leadership with a very defined culture

Greg Farber:
Right, and it leads to a cumulative understanding of where things are going. Let me let me ask you on a more personal note, you also have some entrepreneurial experience, just personally, I understand that you have a nonprofit that you either founded or work with. Can you talk to us a little about the mission and what that what that does and little personal plug for you here. I know. It's something that that's dear to your heart. And I wanted to know a little bit more about that.

Andy Zambito: 
I absolutely have to although for somebody if your audience is entrepreneurial, looking for money, making a nonprofit might not be the entrepreneurial path they're looking for.

Greg Farber:
Well perhaps not, but the lessons you've learn doing one may actually be applicable to another, right? Because you don't want either to fail, right? Maybe the goal is absolutely money, but you don't want either to fail.

Andy Zambito: 
So I try to follow my own advice where I can, right? So the the mission is, I spent a lot of time down a place that's near and dear to me is the Caribbean, and specifically an island Roatan off the coast of Honduras is one of the as part of the second largest barrier reef systems in the world. And is one of the few areas which is still, you know, fairly well cared for, and is experiencing a lot of boom of tourism in the rest and needs to protect the piece that makes it special, which is the reef, the Marine Park, and the rest of this, both for the lives of the people that live there, but also for the tourists to have something to enjoy. So I was passionate about scuba diving and being there and the people. And so I was just looking for what can I do to most contribute that related to skills that I might have. And even some skills that I didn't, I always like to push myself a bit. So I, yeah, I approached them on multiple occasions, and even on my own kind of branched out and said, 'Let's just do this and see what happens,' and started a nonprofit here in the US, to be if you will, the fundraising vehicle and arm to assist them with their overall mission. We've been, it's been a labor of love for several years on my own. And I've managed to hopefully bring some some good folks in to help me do this and kind of help take it to the next level. But yeah, I'm very passionate about that. And, you know, for that it was figuring out I remember it was I do my work job by day, and then it'll be in the evenings. Okay? How do you get 501(c)(3) status, I've never done it, let's go figure that out. And everything actually, you know, I find that entrepreneurs get, sometimes this has happened to me with great ideas, and my past sometimes get stopped based on knowing too much. And this is a great example of that. If you know, like, I did an MBA, I did all these things, I had all these great ideas. And then I would talk myself out of them because I realized, oh, here are all the things that could go wrong, and why this may not work and all the rest. And I say well, maybe there's a better idea and kind of move off of it.

Greg Farber: 
Well, just like in the meeting, you mentioned earlier all the reasons why you shouldn't.

Andy Zambito:   
Exactly, and I and that stopped me for much of my life of kind of kick starting something. And if you look at almost all of the big, really famous success stories, they either didn't bother to look around the corner to see what else could go wrong. And they just charged headlong into it. Or they just did it anyway. Because it puts them it's that old, there's an Irish folk tale thing with a guy throws his hat over the wall, and he has no nothing to do but go over the wall to get it. So if you're going down this path, if we already accept that many entrepreneur, things aren't going to work. You can always talk yourself out of something. So this dive in. I don't know what I'm doing with this. Okay, well, first thing, form acompany, I can do that. Fill all these papers, figure this out, document that and just go one foot for the other. What's the next problem? Oh, geez, I don't even know that was a thing. Okay, I have no choice. But to tackle it. Now I'm deep into it. Let's keep pushing forward. And then you come out the other side. And you have something great. You know, it's that, but I could have easily stopped myself from doing that. At any point in time?

Greg Farber: 
Do you find then that you used one way or the other the same sort of leadership style decision making? You know, I hear scuba, I'm thinking boy, there's a lot of prep work involved there. There's a lot of teamwork, you got to trust that that the gear has been, you know, properly inspected this that whatever, you know, do you do you have sort of correlations? Do you see running that in a similar way in your mind to running a sales force? Or are they so disparate that the lessons don't really translate?

Andy Zambito: 
It's funny, I try to make up analogies on the fly all the time. So I'll dive into yours here. And so what I'll say is, there is there is one piece that's analogous. You talked about kind of trusting your team and the team trusting you and having people be able to do these things. Yes, in scuba, absolutely. You know, when people start out, there's a lot of anxiety. I have all this equipment, I've got to think of all these things, any one piece of equipment could go wrong, and that could lead to failure and all the rest. But if you talk to anybody who's been doing it for a while, they'll tell you just the opposite. It's the most peaceful thing they can do. It's the most relaxing thing and they can do. Because all that equipment anything else just kind of blends away. Once you've gotten comfortable with how things are going to operate, once you've seen some things go wrong, and and know that it wasn't catastrophic. I mean, I've I've run out of air, I mean, I've had situations happen. You know, these things happen, okay, but you keep a level head about you. And I find that that absolutely translates into at least a selling team and all the rest. We have to rely on each other at various parts to to operate because no one can do all of it at once. And if something goes wrong, you are not going to fix it by panicking. It's the same concept so let's not panic or go over why do we get in the ditch like first we have to get to the surface and breathe again. First we have to get to the win of the deal. Then we can go back and look at, okay we had a faulty sales process, faulty equipment, we had a this person, you know, failed at their task, okay, we've got to train or whatever it might be. But I think those are true. Because once you have that, then now I can operate, the team can operate. We all know and trust that we're doing mostly the right things at all times. And you always, of course, have to inspect what you expect. So I don't even know if I'm super relaxed. I check all the gear before I get I have a buddy check it. We don't assume that we have all the answers. I'm gonna do proposal, this is what I'm thinking. But what did you see in that meeting? Do you think this will resonate? No, I actually think this other person is not going to like that. Oh, okay. Now let's rethink this. So it's not a single solitary task. It is a collaborative effort.

Greg Farber: 
You know, as you as you were answering, I kept thinking, in my mind, the words comfort zone. And the same thing with entrepreneurship, if you're not willing to step out of your comfort zone, you're not going any further. But I do recognize that people at large, do like their comfort zones. I've personally never gone scuba diving, and I would share some of the same fears that you just mentioned, what if the equipment fails? What if I run out of air? Whatever, am I going to die underwater? But I'm comfortable driving a car and I have no fear going 60 on the highway. And I could have a blowout any minute and also die. But I'm not afraid of it. Even though that's probably more likely than the scuba incident, right? When you look at sort of statistics, but because we're comfortable with it, we haven't gotten willing to break out of our comfort zone and into the next thing. Maybe I should go scuba diving, is that your message?

Andy Zambito: 
Certainly I'll tell ya look, growth only happens at the edge or outside of the comfort zone. And I would encourage people, I've never taken a role in my career that I knew with certainty that I could do everything there, and there was nothing new for me to learn or experience.

Greg Farber: 
Absolutely.

Andy Zambito: 
Every time I thought I figured it out. I was like, oh my God I was, I look back. I'm like I knew nothing back then and all the rest. And I'll give you the scuba, my wife, terrified of it. I got her to go on a discover. And next thing is the world opened up to her and she's seeing sea turtles and all the rest, is kicking around and going you know, loving it and can't wait to get back. So I would encourage you haha, get something that will push you out of your zone, I promise you you'll, you'll have a good experience.

Greg Farber:
And you're absolutely right about the career too. I mean, the changes that I've had in my career where I've had to go into something that was much more daunting or the unknown have been much more rewarding than than other changes. So on this on this note, and we're kind of still on this, this scuba thing here. We have a segment where we want to kind of give you a couple of rapid fire questions, pick one pick the other this or that. And just to kind of you know, again, go into that personality and see where where you land. Let's move to our next segment, What Would You Choose? So naturally, my first question to you is would you rather be above water or underwater?

Andy Zambito: 
Oh, when I want to relax my favorite thing in the world is to do like a night dive where you literally can make everything disappear. And with bioluminescence looks like it feels it looks like you're floating through space. It's, that to me is one of my favorite. Now I wouldn't want to stay there forever. But if you're saying what's a happy place for me? That's certainly something I love.

Greg Farber: 
That's really cool. And so I do a lot of hiking. And on occasion, I've done a night hike. And it's kind of a similar thing, because your senses are totally different, what you're taking in, it's no longer just daylight visuals, you're taking in all kinds of other sensory input, and it's absolutely incredible. Do you see yourself as more of an optimist or a realist, are those actually the same for you?

Andy Zambito:   
This will be a challenge, and my team will will quote me on things too. So my father was a foreign service officer, you know, stationed in some, some pretty, not ideal places at times. And, you know, shared with me he said, 'Son, it's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.' So I think that I'm an interesting blend and cross. I'd like to believe that I'm an optimist. But I think that the outward expression of what I'm doing is, you know, I'm paid in sales to objection handle to look for the negatives, right selling, it would be order taking if there wasn't a No, right. So the whole point is to identify the no's and knock them down. So my career path, I have to spend a lot of my energies looking for why something might not happen, what's the negative side of it? So I think it could portray that, I have to be a realist in that world. But obviously, I think I wouldn't be in this profession also if I weren't an optimist that I saw the potential all the greatness ahead and I'm gonna do everything I can to make that part come to life. So I hope that's not a wishy washy answer. It just is the reality of my world.

Greg Farber:
No, that's a great answer. And that's why we do these, right? Because they spur sort of some interesting thinking about how would we do this and we frame all this in sense of you're a business leader. But these things shape how you interact generally with the world around you. And I find it fascinating to see these answers. I asked myself the same questions before we get together. And I'm like, this is this is really interesting. We talked a little bit earlier, you talked about culture being, I think you said culture was more important than strategy. Defining these is a little bit difficult. And I'm thinking more in the way of sort of like heart versus mind, do you think passion or purpose is more important?

Andy Zambito: 
But that one's tricky, because I just talked to you, as you'd take organization, I said, you know, we're a mission driven organization first. And one of our five core values is passion. So you know, but you have to have both. But I would say if I had to pick one of those, I would, I would pick purpose. Because otherwise, you know, you've seen somebody who's passionate without purchase purpose. They that's somebody who's fully energized and spinning in a circle with no direction.

Greg Farber:
But they get nowhere, exactly. When you have that purpose you end up getting somewhere.

Andy Zambito: 
Okay, but but I would argue you can't, you can't be like, you can have purpose without passion, you won't get there. You'll move towards it. But you won't get there. Because what is going to drive you in those dark moments, what's going to drive you past, like we've said, that entrepreneur who hits every obstacle along the way, if they weren't passionate about it, they would bail out after the first or second obstacle. Because they're passionate, they say I have no choice. I've declared that that's where I'm going period. So these obstacles are nothing but new, kind of like engineering problems. How do I get past this? How do I get over it, under it, around it? That's not you know, so the question isn't, for us, like isn't, are we going to be a great company? Yes, we will. But the thing was, how fast? How big? How great. How fast can you get there and all the rest is more of it. So purpose over passion. But without both you won't make it.

Greg Farber: 
I have a feeling you're gonna give me a similar answer for the last one. And I want this one to come from personal Andy. Not business, Andy. I think business Andy, I already know the answer. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Adaptability, or stability?

Andy Zambito: 
Adaptability.

Greg Farber: 
Okay.

Andy Zambito:   
I went from gut on that.

Greg Farber:
I thought that's the direction you were gonna go. And so I'm very risk averse in my other life, right? My day job, I work in audit and compliance. And I'm that Department of No, that sits around the table and is like we can't do that. Which is sometimes a tough position to be in. But I think about it. And adaptability is incredibly important to me. But the foundation for me has always been stability.

Andy Zambito: 
So you're asked, you're asking personal Andy? So I will say,

Greg Farber: 
Yeah, that's why I was curious. And I loved that the answer immediately came out, there was no hesitation.

Andy Zambito:   
I've never had if you ask people who know me too, I don't do anything halfway. Right? So if I, when I make a decision, it's all in. It's not about being stable. So and in my career professional, right Sales, if you look at it is one of the most risk comfortable ones risk tolerant, because it's it's a profession where you have to put, you know, half your income at stake every day, and your name is on the scoreboard and everybody can see where you are every day. And if you don't perform regardless, I said no excuse, or regardless of the reason you could be replaced. So it is you get very comfortable very quickly with being in high risk. But I also would argue, you need to imagine like your your personal life if you if you try to stay risk averse. And you say I'm going to try to stay in this comfort zone of even how I feel, then you're I would argue you can't feel the high highs without risking the low lows. And if you even look back in your life and said, 'Would I would I give up all those most euphoric moments of my life to have avoided that, you know, one or two those really painful ones?' I think more people would argue no, they,

Greg Farber:
Right, those painful ones make you stronger along the way.

Andy Zambito:   
And so if you're not will, you will, you will. For me personally, I don't take hope everyone takes offense, it would be a life of of mediocrity and dissatisfaction to try to stay in that comfort zone. And I also believe for me personally, when I've looked at doing anything, and I go all in, it's the question of Are you a driver? Are you a passenger? If you are like, it's like saying, I'm gonna go into the casino, am I gonna play the slot machine? And just keep hoping it'll give me the result? Or am I going to put the chips and cards or am I a poker player, a dice roller where the action is on me, right? So for me, it's always been that, you know, I want the ball when the game's on the line. I'm going to and I want to be a part of that. And if I am not good enough, I'm gonna go work hard to get better. And like I said, learn from that and take the risks of the downside in order to keep striving for a bigger and bigger upside.

Greg Farber:
Hey, some really famous person said a number of years ago you miss all the shots you don't take.

Andy Zambito:   
Exactly.

Greg Farber:
So if you're not out there taking shots, then you miss them all.

Andy Zambito: 
Well, that ties back around to the entrepreneurial piece, right? I mean, so if you, it's easy to, to be a Monday morning quarterback or judge from the sideline with somebody else's striving or trying to do. And like I said, everybody will tell you, it can't be done until you've done it.

Greg Farber: 
So last thing I want to do move to a small segment here we call Bringing Inspiration, as if you haven't brought enough already, I think you've brought a lot of really cool insights to us today. But this is an opportunity where we want to, we give you a little bit of homework, and then we want you to tell us about something, or bring something to share with us today that inspires you personally. So I'd like to give you an opportunity to tell us what you chose and why and tell us a little bit about it.

Andy Zambito:   
So I think this is going to sound cliche, but I'm you dated me earlier, and I am a I'm a late in life, father. And so the it has changed my perspective, if you'd asked me 10 years ago about certain things like in this kind of meeting, I would have had maybe very different answers. But I will say I have married an amazing woman and she had children. So I had to dive into learning how to do all this on day one, I didn't have the training manual. And then we have a young one ourselves, who's a three and a half. And all the things, like I said take on the challenge if you're going to do if I'm going to be a parent, let's go all in, okay, if I'm going to be a husband go on. And so this is, is definitely inspiring in the sense that prior my my purpose was different. You said purpose over, you know, passion. I was passionate about everything I was doing my purpose was much more singular, and you know, career oriented, but for different reasons. Now, when I look at at what I'm striving to do career wise, financially wise, and even entertainment, education, all the things I want to provide for the family it is it is much more, there's a clarity of purpose that, you know, has has gelled for me. And I think it will only fuel me harder than, I didn't need more fuel, but it's supercharged. Now. So I know a lot of folks will say family, but but prior to, you know, only a handful of years ago, I was, there wasn't one it was me.

Greg Farber:
No, I think that's a great answer. And kids have come up periodically on this particular podcast, because they are in fact such a source of inspiration. And they change how we approach problem solving. They change how we approach leadership, they change how we approach our goals and purpose and everything. I think that's a great answer. And congratulations to you. My daughter is going to be 10 in a little while and it's it. Yes, it's a cliche, but cliches have a certain amount of truth to them. I think in this case, a whole lot of truth to them. And that's awesome. And congrats.

Andy Zambito:   
I've been blessed in that department. Now four children, right, in a very short period of time is it and then like  I said that an amazing wife. So it's a full house of energy to give me a brand new view of the world. And like I said to drive this forward to the next to the next level.

Greg Farber:
Absolutely. I think that's a wonderful place to close. That's a great high note. It's been like I said, very inspirational to have you here today. I think it's been really, really fascinating to hear your approach on things. Our work backgrounds are so different. I couldn't sell anything if I tried. It's somehow not my personality. And yet I love everything that you brought with today. And thank you so much for taking the time.

Andy Zambito: 
You're very kind for having me it was it was an absolute pleasure. So hopefully it was good for you in the audience. And we'll do again sometime.

Greg Farber:  
Absolutely.

All opinions expressed by Andy Zambito are his own and not the opinions of Leader Bank NA. Leader Bank is not affiliated with Creatio Leader Bank is not affiliated with any of Andy's personal ventures. Don't forget to subscribe and rate our show the Building Interest podcast is live on all podcast platforms, YouTube, and Tiktok. We want to hear what you think of each episode and encourage you to submit any questions that you want us to cover. So please find us on our YouTube or Tik Tok channels and comment your thoughts. For more information on today's subject visit leaderbank.com In addition to past episodes, you can also find our corresponding blog entries for more insights. This podcast is a production of Leader Bank and Equal Housing Lender. Member FDIC. NMLS number 449250.