Why the Best Teams Row in the Same Direction

Intro / Outro (00:01):

Welcome to the Astrus Advantage podcast, where we share timely insights on risk underwriting and insurance trends shaping the construction industry and beyond. Each episode brings practical perspectives from industry leaders to help you navigate complexity with greater clarity and confidence.

Danette Beck (00:20):

Hey everyone. Welcome to the third episode of the Astrus Advantage podcast. My name's Danette Beck, and I'm here on behalf of Astrus Insurance Solutions, where we've spent the last 10 years focused solely on the construction industry. At Astrus, we bring together underwriting claims, risk engineering, and data to help contractors stay protected and keep those projects moving. We're launching this podcast to shine a light on the real issues facing contractors, brokers, and risk professionals today from rising insurance costs and workforce challenges to evolving job site exposures and litigation trends. So, while we're focusing on that, we also want to focus on some of our amazing colleagues and how they came into the insurance business. And today we thought it would be really fun to do a podcast with our colleague Zach Howell, who's an AVP here on our Wrap-Up team that focuses on projects. But he, in his own right, was a collegiate athlete. So we thought we'd have a fun podcast to talk about translating being a D1 athlete into underwriting and the teamwork that we have here at Astrus. So Zach, welcome to the podcast.

Zach Howell (01:25):

Hey, thank you for that introduction, Danette. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Danette Beck (01:29):

Yeah, so let's get started. Okay, so take us back to your time, like how did you get started with rowing? I feel like I'm a little bit of an expert now that I've seen The Boys In The Boat, but I'm sure you're going be able to help fill in some of my knowledge gaps here. So take us back to your time in college or maybe even before then, and how did you get into rowing in the first place?

Zach Howell (01:51):

Yeah, so I mean, great movie, good on you for watching it, but really my story, it starts well before college, before high school even, all the way back to, say, when I was in eighth grade, just finishing up middle school. So I went to a pretty small Catholic K-8 school, about 30 kids in my class. And I was going off to once again an All Boys Catholic high school. And nobody that I had known in my life was going to the school with me. And not only that, it was about a half hour train right away. So I was really kind of up and moving my life out on my own to really start taking sort of some responsibility and ownership of what I wanted to do with myself. And I had figured going into high school. I wanted to be a football guy.

Zach Howell (02:36):

I wanted to be like one of those kids on the shows I was going try out for the team. I, that was going be my thing. I was going to join the football team and I was pretty big for that size. I was an early bloomer. I was about as tall as I am now. I didn't realize at 14 I had just about finished growing vertically at least, you know, pretty big guy. One of the biggest in that class of 30, I'm going try and I'm going to be a Lineman. That was going to be my thing. So I get to tryouts and as it turns out, there were a whole lot of kids that had been playing football since peewees. Mind you, I had never played organized football in my life. And that's helpful, <laugh>. It's helpful. And as it turns out, I thought that I was a pretty big kid, but the ones trying out for the line were much bigger than me.

Zach Howell (03:23):

So I end up getting cut from the team. I don't make it. At the time, I was very upset. The first thing that I sought out to do, going off to high school and having some ownership of the direction of my little life there. I failed at the first thing that I wanted to do before the school year even officially started. I started off on a failure, but I was determined. So instead of joining clubs or just heading home after my classes were done, I would stick by after school, head over to the school gym and lift weights. Then I would take a later train home. And that was what I did for a while. That went on for a couple of months until eventually towards the spring of that year now my friend Brian, who sat next to me in homeroom, he said, Hey Zach, why don't you come with me and try out for the Spring Crew Team.

Zach Howell (04:14):

I did it in the Fall. It's great. Like we go every weekend, we're traveling for races. You work out every day, everyone gets strong, you get fit. And I thought to myself, what great way to continue building myself up, get stronger, get more fit. So this way next year when it came around to the following fall, which would be my Sophomore year, I would try out for the football team. I would make it this time and that was still going be my thing. That still was my ultimate goal. So, you know, I try out for the crew team. I make the team, I have some success. I make that top freshman boat that Spring. And I remember having a conversation with my father towards the end of the school year. And, you know, he wanted to know what my plan was, what was I going do next year in the Fall.

Zach Howell (04:58):

And, you know, I kind of looked at him and I said well, I'm going try out for the football team. I mean, what, what do you mean? Like, everything that I've been doing over the last year since, I had been cut from the team was to go back and make the team and that was what I was going to do. He asked me a question, it was a question that was really more of a statement, but disguised as a question. So his question statement was, why would you go and join the football team and ride the bench when you could stick with what you're doing and have a chance of being really successful? Wow. Yeah. That's profound. <Laugh>. It was profound. And in the way that we talked to each other, we are very direct in something. So he had exhibits A, B, C, and D on why I would ride the bench. And that dream of being that football guy was maybe not the right dream for me. And well, when it came to it, I showed up to rowing practice that following Fall, and I would continue to show up for rowing pretty much everyday for the next seven years.

Danette Beck (05:59):

That's amazing. And at such a young age to make that decision, just the sheer dedication and determination to do that, I mean that's, a mindset at such an early age. Amazing.

Zach Howell (06:14):

And I like that story too because it kind of showed me from an early age that it took that failure of mine, not making the football team something I thought was so disastrous for myself and to put me on a path that ultimately was the right path for me. A path that was ultimately really good and path that would come to really positively define a large part of my life.

Danette Beck (06:39):

What is so amazing to me is it's the preparation that goes into, the work, right? And, it relates, you know, really to underwriting where there's so much more time in the preparation side of it before you actually get to the deal or working with a client. In my mind, it's the exact same kind of thought process or, muscle memory that you have to have in order to continue down that path, right? Like, get up every day, go to the the boat house, get in the boat, do your workouts. Like that is self-driven, right? You have to be able to do that. And the discipline behind it really is that, that mindset shift that you have to have.

Zach Howell (07:18):

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going take you a bit off script here and just go ahead and jump onto that and say, in a lot of ways too, it's, you know, this is one of the questions. How do we tie this back into what I see in my professional life, that day-to-day commitment, that consistency. You could really tie that into projects as well, especially for the SIP sponsors at and Astrus as well 'cause we dedicate a ton of time and resources into our risk engineering and our loss control. But, in rowing, you're going and you're practicing every single day. You're committing probably over a thousand hours a year for the big championship race at the end of the year. And that big champion wait,

Danette Beck (08:00):

How many hours?

Zach Howell (08:01):

Over a thousand? Yeah.

Danette Beck (08:03):

Wow.

Zach Howell (08:04):

Everything you're doing between the actual practices, time on the water, commuting to get there, whatever you need to do to recover so you could row, recover, repeat every single day. It you're doing it, you do it. So you get to that championship race at the end of the year and you're as prepared as you could possibly be. And that race is only about six minutes long. All of this time you spend every single day for that result. That until you get there and understand what that result is, you don't know if you had ever done enough. Sure you improved throughout your time, but you never know until the end, whether you're put enough in and, you know, when you're managing a Wrap-Up every single day, you're putting time and resources and energy into loss control. How are we preventing claims? How are we making the job site more safe? Claims, advocacy claims? How are we managing the claims? And in a similar way, you're going improve throughout the process, but as we know on construction projects, the wrap-up themselves could go for five years and then you could be paying claims for another ten. So you have to put in work every single day and not know until way down the line whether or not everything you did, how it's actually going to work out. So there's some similarities that I see there as well.

Danette Beck (09:19):

You know, that really goes into the consistency that I see, Zach, that you have to be consistent every single day and show up every day because it does take a lot of work and a lot of effort to manage construction projects. But also the same thing when you're in rowing, right? I mean, you have to be there every day because it's not just you that's in the boat. You've got seven other people that are relying on you, to be there. Well, I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the same way here. Like this is a team sport. If one of us doesn't do our job, then that project potentially won't be successful.

Zach Howell (09:50):

Absolutely. So, I mean, you said it best, everyone has to show up every single day and there are so many people coming together, not just in wrap-ups, not just you know, in insurance, in life, that you're all, you know, to use the pun, rowing in the same direction. You're all pushing towards one common shared goal. You know, I think it's really important to show up every day for people, especially in our industry. People need to trust that you're going to be there, going be trusted, you're going be reliable. Something that really drew me to the Astrus team is the consistency that Astrus has had in the marketplace and, you know, with their partners. So we're not going change things up on you and we're going be there for you when you need us and for everyone that we work with, we hope to have that same level of trust and reliance on them too.

Danette Beck (10:37):

I'm sure those seven others that were like family, right? The, you guys work together a lot, right? Especially if it's a thousand hours of rowing, my goodness. Anyway, so speaking of races, what do you miss most about competing? I mean, I'm assuming that you're not competing now, but let's go with like focus on the collegiate, like the intensity of that sport which I know is highly competitive in the Northeast. So what do you miss most about it?

Zach Howell (11:02):

You're right. I, I haven't competed in a long time, but I, I'd say I have to miss the comradery as we were talking about, you spend so much time with your fellow athletes and the focus, it's really all about on how we can make the crew better. How can we make the collective better? I like to say that rowing is the ultimate team sport. A lot of people that play sports say that about their own. But rowing's unique in that in every race, every competition, there are no individual stats, right? We don't know who scored the game winning goal. We don't know who gave up the game winning goal, who made the most three pointers, right? We don't know any of these things. The whole crew wins and loses together and the time of the crew is the time of everyone. So just like being able ...

Danette Beck (11:52):

You win as a team and you lose as a team.

Zach Howell (11:53):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you build a lot of trust and camaraderie with your fellow, you know, athletes through that process. And certainly something I miss.

Danette Beck (12:05):

I'm going switch, I'm going switch gears on you 'cause I know that you still row and I know because I saw it on LinkedIn that you recently competed in a philanthropy event with Row New York. So I want to talk a little bit about this,and highlight this for our listeners about some of the community service or philanthropy that our colleagues do. So what drew you to volunteer with them and why is this resonate with you personally?

Zach Howell (12:30):

So a number of years ago I read a book titled The Most Beautiful Thing by Arshay Cooper. It was also made into a movie, like a docu-movie style, which has a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes. So it's really excellent. I recommend that anyone listening, go watch the movie, go read the book. And it's a true story. It's nonfiction and what it covers is the first all African American rowing team, which happened to take place in Chicago. So it was a guy from Penn, he is a lawyer, he lands in Chicago, takes a look at the disparity in what people have there and decides, what better way to try to help some of these kids out than starting a rowing program. So he goes and he funds the thing up and starts this rowing program and heads to inner city high schools and brings a rowing shell to them, and it gets a bunch of kids to try out. And those that stick with it, their lives are changed. And Arshay Cooper, who's the author of the book and stars and produces the movie, he is one of those athletes.

Danette Beck (13:36):

Oh, wow.

Zach Howell (13:37):

Yeah. So it's his own story that he's retelling. And since I was lucky enough to read the book, I knew that was going be my thing, right? It's like if I was going get involved in any sort of philanthropy giving back, I don't know how I'm going do it, but like, that's the angle I want to take. I want to make rowing more accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to get involved in it, because it's really expensive to support a rowing program. The rowing shells themselves cost tens of thousands of dollars. You need a boathouse for them, which means you need waterfront property <laugh>.

Danette Beck (14:14):

Right, right.

Zach Howell (14:15):

You know, you need transport...

Danette Beck (14:17):

Which isn't cheap here in New York.

Zach Howell (14:18):

It's not cheap anywhere, you need access to water. You know, not everyone has that new transportation. The coaches ride in little skiffs, so little boats with engines, the cost to add up and up. And for schools that don't have that sort of budget, it's unfortunately, the young could be student athletes would never be able to participate in a sport like that. So when I found Ro New York, I knew I had to get involved. And, you know, Ro New York is a New York City based nonprofit that has worked for over 20 years to provide accessibility to the sport of rowing to all New Yorkers, regardless of background and ability, including youth, veterans, and people with disabilities. In addition to rowing the organization supports youth participants through academic tutoring and college readiness programs. So, wow, not only are we taking these kids in, throwing them into a sport, which in of itself, we talked about, you know, it instills the characteristics of consistency, discipline, and commitment into the young athletes, but also providing academic support, tutoring, mentoring, it's get these kids in good colleges and

Danette Beck (15:27):

It's just remarkable.

Zach Howell (15:29):

Yeah.

Danette Beck (15:29):

And it's been around for 20 years and I learned about it because you posted on LinkedIn. It's just amazing the amount of lack of knowledge really, that I even have about, you know, this organization which is doing such great work for the greater New York area. But maybe from a personal perspective, 'cause I know you and I've talked to a couple times about rowing and I can hear the passion in your voice about what it did for you and that literally that flip of the switch when you decided that rowing was going to be your sport and how much you poured into it. But from your perspective, that's not just an isolated incident, right? That rowing can literally change the trajectory of a young person's life and Row New York looks like it's trying to do that on a much more accessible basis. Would you agree? Like what's, from your perspective, what do you think?

Zach Howell (16:18):

I would agree and I think that not just trying, there's succeeding and providing that the, sport of rowing, you know, we, we talked about the consistency, the discipline, the determination required to, you know, just go through the sport, participate in the sport. If you take those sort of characteristics and apply that to any area of life, whether that's athletic, academic, personal relationships, family relationships, whatever it may be, I think a young person could find some success. Rowing teaches people that if you pour a lot of time and effort into something, there could be some great results for you. I've gotten to meet throughout this process, so many of the Row New York alumni who...

Danette Beck (17:00):

I was going ask you about that.

Zach Howell (17:01):

Yeah. Who many of them most attend colleges, many of them are doing really well. It'd be great to get some involved in Astrus. But you could really see firsthand the success the program is having.

Danette Beck (17:15):

I love that. I mean, personal mission to see it grow at scale and be able to see it impact to other individuals in such a positive manner. I just, I can't get over just what I think of this organization and, you know, Row New York, right? You mentioned it, right? They emphasize teamwork, perseverance but also academic success, you know, all of those together. How do you see those values, you know, transform the youth today, especially with, you know, all of the evil video games and non-athletic, right? I mean, you're spending a lot of time outside. So I have to think that, you know, Row New York also helps in this area as well, is getting kids back outside and doing something good not only for themselves, but for the good of the team that they're on.

Zach Howell (18:03):

Yeah. I mean, kids are outside or Rowing<laugh>

Danette Beck (18:08):

Right, I mean, they're not in front of an iPad or an iPhone or a video game.

Zach Howell (18:13):

Yeah. At least at least when it's nice enough out nowadays they're probably doing indoor workouts, but yeah, they are together...

Danette Beck (18:20):

Especially last week. Goodness.

Zach Howell (18:21):

Yeah. They are together, they are in you know, community type environments where, like I said, everyone's pushing together and they're, they're getting support not just from the coaches, the mentors, but their teammates as well outside of practice. We talked about the tutoring. So they have some mandatory tutoring, things like that as well. So even on times where all their time isn't booked up rowing or preparing to row, it's they're joining in, you know, additional academic tutoring and workshops and things like that with their teammates, coaches, and mentors.

Danette Beck (18:55):

So when you look back on your journey and you go from high school, you go to college, you've got this high, you know, intensity, competitive nature that also had discipline. I mean, you had to go to school, right? You had to get good grades in order to graduate. And now in the professional environment, and then also taking a look at being a volunteer, mentor, what core lesson or lessons would you say ties all of this together?

Zach Howell (19:19):

Yeah, so I think it's the importance, not to be cheesy, but like the importance of teamwork, the importance of understanding that in most areas of your life, if you work together towards achieving a common mission, you, you're gonna get much further there than going alone, right? And I think having that sort of mentality and applying that is really freeing in a way because, well, it frees you to enjoy in the successes of your peers. It frees you to put yourself out there and potentially make mistakes and take risks because you know, your own shortcomings are gonna be supported by and shared with your peers as well. And it frees you to just really focus on attacking whatever mission that is because, you know, at the end of the day, you're not worried about, I don't know that the minuscule stuff that doesn't matter. You're not worried about offending someone if you have a disagreement on an opinion, you all have the understanding. Everything that we're all doing together is in my best interest and our best interest.

Danette Beck (20:21):

Yeah, we win as a team and lose as a team.

Zach Howell (20:23):

Exactly.

Danette Beck (20:24):

Well, Zach, thank you so much for your time. Listeners, thanks so much for, stopping by and checking into the Astrus Advantage podcast. If you want to find out more information about us, go ahead and go to our website, www.Astrusins.com, and we will see you next time. Thank you.

Zach Howell (20:43):

Thank you.

Intro / Outro (20:45):

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