We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zach McCullough. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zach below.

Zach, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think in order to be successful you have to do what others won’t to to get to where they haven’t. A quote by Oprah that I’ve always lived by is, “Do what you have to do until you until you can do what you want to do.” I remember hearing this quote on TV when I was very young but it’s always stuck with me. What it meant to me was in order to get to do what you want to do sometimes you have to do a necessary step that you may not want to for a period in time.

For me, most of my major “breaks” in life came when I was being consistent with my efforts. Not because I was the smartest, or youngest, or any other reason that we could potentially throw in there but because I was never intimidated by rejection. Rejection is not only a way of life and a very consistent thing many people run into to but more importantly it’s, in my life at least, usually been a redirection towards something better than I couldn’t have imagined myself. The harder you work the luckier you get. Where most people usually drop the ball when it comes to success is being their own harshest critic. We live in a world that will readily and loudly tell you no and do so frequently. So why tell yourself no? I’ve adopted a mentally of letting someone else tell me no before I ever put myself in a position where I’m placing limitations on myself.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve traditionally let my life go in the direction the wind takes while primarily just following anything that might interest me. Like any college student, I was extremely confused about what I wanted to do with my life and while I was studying for the MCAT to pursue the process to get into medical school I kind of had an epiphany. I didn’t want to do this. It was a long path and I came from less than humble beginnings so relying on anyone but myself to help finance the process to get into medical school was not an option. So I dropped out of college. Why would I get a degree in something that I wouldn’t pursue?

Through some good luck, timing, and persistence I got into the world of selling cars. Audis more specifically. And before I knew it I was diving head first into a sales career that would eventually significantly change the path of my life. I had so much exposure selling Audi’s not only from a customer perspective but the people I worked alongside. Growing up you’re taught the most lucrative careers are medicine, law, or usually some other trade but rarely is sales mentioned. By 23 I was making more than what I ever knew was possible and I was hooked. One particular manager that I worked alongside took me under his wing. He was half Hungarian and half German and introduced me to the world of travel. He was showing flight deals before flight deals were flight deals.

One day this manager pulls me into his office and shows me he’s found a $450 roundtrip ticket from Atlanta, where I was living at the time, to Paris. I booked the ticket that day for a date 6 months later. I had no passport at the time, no one in my family had ever been out of the country, no one was going with me and I had only been to a place twice in my life at 23 before I went abroad for the first time. I booked and planned a two-week solo trip with his help, never looked back, and I’ve been hooked on solo travel ever since.

Eventually, after a few years of selling cars my pride and ambition got the best of me. I was the first in my immediate family to go to college but I also wanted to be the first to finish. So in 2018 I made the extremely difficult decision to leave my role selling Audi’s in order to finish my degree. I took 4 classes in the Spring while working, 2 Maymesters, 4 Summer classes, and 6 classes in the Fall to graduate in December of 2018 with my BS in Finance.

During my last semester in college through a mentor and some close friends, I was able to secure a few referrals at some amazing tech companies. I received a lot… and I mean a lot of rejection when attempting to make my transition into tech but I eventually secured a few offers at some incredible companies. During the process of changing careers and professions that amount of rejection to eventually see success could’ve broken me but I never let it because I never took no for an answer.

During the time of building my tech sales career, COVID happened. I was only in tech a year before COVID happened taking everything remote. By this time I had gone to about 20 countries but I saw the opportunity to take my life on the road and become a digital nomad so I took that opportunity and ran. I packed up my apartment in Atlanta thinking I would only travel a few weeks then move to New York and before I knew it I was almost traveling 2 full years. In February of 2023 I had to go to Denver for a sales convention and I was traveling abroad for almost 2 years full at this point so I was a little ready to settle down.

I came to Denver thinking I’d only stay a month then I arrived and I was ready to settle down but liked the idea of having the accessibility Denver has to offer. I flew back to Atlanta and drove the Uhaul to Denver and I’ve been here since then. In the spring of 2023, I started training for my half Ironman. For those that don’t know an Ironman is a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, then a 13.1 mile run. During the process for this training, I not only struggled but couldn’t find anyone to train with. Meetup felt too intimidating and with Bumble BFF I wasn’t successful finding a training partner because no one was as active as I was looking for. This problem was spearheaded in the fall when I found myself snowboarding and ran into the same problem again.

Eventually, after a few times of snowboarding, I couldn’t shake the question of, “Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?” and that’s how Zolte was born. I didn’t know it but that’s how it was born.

Zolte is my friend’s on-demand app. I wanted to create something that fostered instant connection for outdoor activities and Zolte does that. People want to meet in small intimate settings and dating apps have given us swiping and chatting fatigue so I wanted to minimize both. When you’re on any social app the goal is almost always to get you to an event in person. Zolte reverse engineers this process by starting with a mutual interest and inviting users to connect over their interests taking a lot of the awkward small talk and planning away. Starting with a mutual interest.

What people may not realize is that we are facing a loneliness epidemic. We are in a loneliness epidemic. People are still adjusting to the post-COVID world especially socially. Gen Zers were forced to go to high school and college remotely, and millennials are replacing kids with pets and pets with plants. Women are staying single longer and the entire US is shifting geographically. People are moving. With all this being said, our third place with remote work has been eliminated and people are yearning for more connections. Zolte fulfills this desire and takes a lot of the usual groundwork away when making new friends.

What I was most passionate about when creating Zolte is the instantaneous factor. There is live 1:1 and group chat. Want to go on a hike tomorrow? You can do that. Want to go for a run and find someone to do that with? You can do that. Want to find someone to go biking with this weekend? You can do that. What differentiates Zolte is intimacy in small group settings, instantaneousness, and activities taking the leg work out of making plans.

Growing up I unfortunately had to experience so much of the world despite my charisma, alone, because my friends didn’t share my interests. I’ve been to 35 countries alone, I trained for my Ironman alone, and I taught myself to snowboard alone. Life is always more memorable and significant when you get to share it with friends. Life should be done together. So I’ most proud of building something to help bring the world together in a way I know hasn’t been done yet. I’m very proud and honored to be putting something out to the world to help people feel more connected and less lonely. Zolte was built by someone who’s always felt like a loner to eliminate people feeling like this in the future.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Whew, this is an excellent question. Excellent because until last year I absolutely hated reading. I’d never do it… I felt there was too much information available online for reading to be necessary in my mind. With that being said going into 2023 one of the big 3 goals I wanted to accomplish was to read 1 book every week for 2023. The way I was able to hack this goal was 1) audiobooks and 2) I saw a youtube once mentioned to listen to everything at 1.5x speed. The cool thing that happened was now whenever I had a long road trip or would clean my apartment I associated those tasks with listening to a book. While I fell short of my goal I did manage to read 44 books in 2023 which truly morphed how my mind worked and thought about things.

So to answer the question read / listen to as many books as you can relevant to things you want to read about. As a wise man once told me as long as you get 1 new things from reading a book that’s a win.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Being consistent. Consistency you’ll seen is the one common thing most successful have in common. The more consistent you are the luckier you’ll be. In my experience it’s less about what avenue or route or strategy you choose but more about how long can you be consistent. Embrace that cringe phase. Cringe and girl boss your way to the moon and back.

Contact Info:

• Website: Zolte.io
• Instagram: Zolte.io
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmc918/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Zolteio

Image Credits
All taken by me but will include in email back to