Leading Through Crisis and Innovation with Anastasiia Pustylnyk, CEO at Aimbulance

You can be brilliant and inspiring, but your impact is limited without people to challenge and support you.

In this week’s episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, we dive deep into strategic marketing, leadership, and resilience with Anastasiia Pustylnyk, CEO and partner at Aimbulance.

Anastasiia isn't just a powerhouse in the business world—she’s a beacon of adaptability, guiding her team through the challenges of war, economic upheaval, and the ever-shifting landscape of the marketing industry.

Anastasiia shares her journey from joining Aimbulance as a junior manager to leading the company as its CEO, all while navigating the complexities of a full-scale invasion in Ukraine.

Through her story, you'll gain insights into the power of teamwork, the importance of adaptability, and the role of leadership in times of crisis.

Leadership in Times of Crisis

Anastasiia shares her experience of leading her team through the initial shock of the war in Ukraine, focusing on the importance of micromanagement and then learning to step back and trust her team as they adapted to new challenges.

The Power of Teamwork

Discover how Anastasiia’s open and collaborative approach to leadership has fostered a culture of creativity, innovation, and mutual support within her team.

Embracing Change and Discovery

Anastasiia talks about the importance of adaptability, not just in business but in life, and how viewing challenges as opportunities for discovery can lead to personal and professional growth.

Impactful Marketing

Learn about Aimbulance’s evidence-based approach to marketing that goes beyond traditional strategies, helping businesses and organizations create meaningful connections with their audiences.

Purpose-Driven Work

Anastasiia’s work with strategic partners like USAID and UNICEF highlights how marketing can be a powerful tool for positive change, addressing critical issues like anti-corruption, media literacy, and public safety.

Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

• Steering Aimbulance Through War: Anastasiia shares firsthand how she managed Aimbulance’s operations amidst the chaos of Ukraine’s full-scale invasion, focusing on practical strategies for navigating crisis and uncertainty.
• From Junior Manager to CEO: Discover the critical milestones in Anastasiia’s journey from joining Aimbulance as a junior manager to becoming its CEO, including key decisions and growth opportunities.
• Building a Supportive and Challenging Team: Learn about Anastasiia’s approach to creating a team that not only supports but also challenges ideas, and how this has been instrumental in her leadership journey.
• Evolving Leadership Style: Hear how Anastasiia shifted from a hands-on management style to empowering her team to make decisions, especially during her time studying abroad.
• Purpose in Action with Global Partners: Explore how collaborating with organizations like UNICEF and USAID has infused her work with a deep sense of purpose and contributed to impactful projects.
• Embracing the Known and Unknown: Dive into Anastasiia’s use of the “known known, known unknown, and unknown unknown” concept to navigate risk management and drive innovation, and how this framework has influenced her strategic decisions.

Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:

• “Everything is just a task that needs to be done, and then you sit, decompose it, and try to figure out how to make it happen.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “Whatever new challenge or something happens on your way, you should be looking at it from the excitement part.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “The most powerful skill that anyone can have in this era is adjustability.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “You can be extremely smart, powerful, intelligent, and inspiring but if you don't have people around who will either challenge your ideas or support and make it happen together with you, you're nothing.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “Leadership is lonely, the higher you get, the lonelier you get because all the decisions are coming your way. But when you involve your team to make those decisions together, they feel that they're a part of it.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “Making mistakes is not something bad, it's something that you learn from.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “Allow those mistakes to happen and pinpoint what we do with it after and just to understand that it's the discovery.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “I think that the only thing that can stop you is in your head. Once you figure that out, you can do whatever you want.” —  Anastasiia Pustylnyk
• “If you learn to leverage it and you learn adaptability, even through difficult times, you can have magical moments and find more of yourself and creativity opens up when you don't expect it.” — Becca Powers
• “Build a team around you and go for it.” — Becca Powers
• “My dream needed a team, and my team needed people with different skill sets.” 
• “For your dreams to come true, you need to build a team around you.” — Becca Powers
• “So many times we're afraid to look at what's negative or what might not work and sometimes we miss the biggest idea unfolding.” — Becca Powers
• “Sometimes the best idea comes from the shared ideas.” — Becca Powers

About Anastasiia:

Anastasiia is the CEO and partner at Aimbulance, a strategic marketing agency, the COO at Anima.help, and a Business Partnership Consultant at INSCIENCE Business. She is also a student at Harvard Business School, the youngest visiting professor at Kyiv Mohyla Business School, and a jury member at Effie Awards Ukraine. She is also a curator and mentor at a program "Be" which helps women who lost their jobs during the War in Ukraine to start new careers in the IT and Creative Industries

With a passion for driving business growth, Anastasiia specializes in delivering outstanding results that exceed client expectations. Through collaborative leadership, she inspires a creative and motivated team to push boundaries and achieve remarkable outcomes.

Connect with Anastasiia Pustylnyk:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Mentioned on the Show:

• Take care of your mental health, decode your anxiety, and check yourself at Anima.help

Pre-order 'A Return To Radiance' by October 7th, and get over $333 in FREE bonuses!!!

Follow Becca Powers:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

We Want to Hear From You!

How have you handled building and leading a team through challenging times? Share your stories of adaptability, teamwork, and using the strengths of others to push through obstacles and reach your goals.

Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your experiences of resilience and innovation are inspiring and help us all learn how to navigate change.

Let’s celebrate the power of working together and adapting to achieve success!

Welcome to another episode of the empowered half-hour. I am so excited to bring you today's guest. She is one of my business partners or business vendor partners ‘cause I have my business partner, but anyway, the same thing, and she's also become a friend. I have with me the CEO and partner of Aimbulance, Anastasiia Pustanek. So Anastasiia, welcome to the show. Hi everyone. It's a pleasure to be here.

How Becca and Anastasiia Connected

I'm so excited to dive into this conversation, but I'd like to give a little bit of a backstory of how we met ‘cause I think it would be cool for the listeners to know that. So Lynae and I have been building the business and two years ago, we needed some help with the website, not even like branding and like website ideas and just really trying to stand up our initial phase of hey, we're coming out world, we're a business now. And it happened to be around the start of the Ukrainian war.

I formerly was at Riverbed Technologies and one of my contacts through Riverbed kept sharing that you guys needed projects to support your teams and to keep working during the start of the war. I had solved probably about four posts and it looked like, I'm like, they've been with tech and they'll understand me and then I can help and whatever, it all felt great. And then we met and I was like, this is going to be a really good thing.

The elements of you guys being under war too were interesting from my perspective because it brought realism to the situation, outside of what was in the news. Like, you guys are real people going through that kind of situation. And then also on the positive side of that, the spirit and the perseverance that you guys have and the optimism that you still show up.

I could cry about it right now. I've seen it so many times and it just made me feel so connected to you. So I don't know if you want to tell the audience a little bit about that experience and then we'll go into your background and what you do.

I remember that when we met on that first call, we cried and I remember those first months we were like, I was pitching every day for 18 hours, different clients trying to find a new, let's say flow the project and flow for the team to keep working because we didn't want to stop. And of course, all the Ukrainian projects were imposed because no one knew what was going to happen and what was going to be and to work on something, to help to somehow stabilize the situation within a group, within a team. And for them to realize that they can still do something to help and so when you reached out, I think there was a match and the click from the very beginning of the conversation. And then we started to work together and it was extremely exciting and we never stopped ever since.

So let's get to your background a little bit. How did you end up at the Aimbulance? Then how did you end up in your role as CEO? Share the back story a little bit.

Anastasiia’s Journey from Entry Level to Executive

I have been at Aimbulance for six and a half years already and then joined as a junior manager. I had a friend working at Aimbulance and they invited me to try and apply for the account manager position.

I was like, yeah, why not? I like to deal with people. I like to arrange things and all of that. I had no background in marketing, like a professional background, but I've read a lot about advertising, Ogilvy, and so on, like seeing some courses. And I was like, yeah, that was something that always excites me. So I was like, why not? 

And then through the years, I started to grow, and take more responsibility. And eventually when the full-scale invasion started my business partner for now, Roman, offered me a partnership and the CEO position, which allowed him and our other partner. And this is another project and our baby that we're working together to start a neuroscientific startup. 

Because I was taking care of the agency and that allowed him to focus on something new and it never stopped ever since. And we're doing exciting things,  we have different types of clients and projects.

We work with UNICEF and USAID. We work with big companies, such as MasterCard, and top Ukrainian businesses. You're not only doing marketing, but you're changing the behavior patterns of different target groups. And that's exciting and that's what I love about what I'm doing.

I can feel your enthusiasm when we work together too. You're like, I'm getting my hands in it, and that's the best part. That's cool. For the listeners to have a little bit of context, why don't you share a little bit more about what you guys do and specialize in, then we'll get into some more questions about you and your story.

Crafting Impactful Marketing Strategies at Aimbulance

So we are at Aimbulance, we help businesses and organizations to grow by making their products and services sexy. That's how we say it, but if to be serious and for real, we are an evidence-based marketing agency. So to develop any type of marketing product, we do really hard research to analyze the category, analyze the user in a category, analyze how they behave and what they are looking for in terms of the category and how business or the organization or service can answer to those needs, to those questions and build their value propositions and all the products based on customer needs. 

So that's what we do and we do experience that from marketing strategy to business strategy. Sometimes we do brand strategies, we create brands, we create applications and websites.

So whatever business needs to achieve their goals I can attest to that. We want to start some marketing campaigns, media, and website design. There's always so much work to be done but we are trying to think outside the box and you guys have shown up and did exactly what she's talking about.

The backend strategy showed us. A lot of our people in a similar industry, what they're doing, how we can position ourselves to be successful, but have a different message. It's been cool, but I want to go back to focusing on you. 

So you started this journey with Aimbulance and you've been there several years. I always like to talk about the trial-to-triumph stories. So let's start with what are some of the challenges and you guys are in an active war too. So whatever, if you want to talk about business challenges or the actual, like working through what you guys are going through, I'll leave it up to you. But what are some challenges that you have had to work through?

The Power of Viewing Challenges as Discoveries

I think when it comes to business and entrepreneurship, you don't have challenges anymore. Somehow in a way you learn that everything is just a task that needs to be done and then you sit, decompose it, and try to figure out how to make it happen.

But of course, when I started to, and there were things that I was doing for the first time, they were like, oh my God, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to figure that out. But in my scenario, there was always a very powerful team with me that we were working together with. So I always knew that I had someone to ask or brainstorm or just to check an idea and that helped. And we also always knew that let's say, mistakes are lessons.

We always just sit together in this room because I'm at the office now and just talk about it and to see what is good to have, and we're taking to the next project and what is just a lesser learn, and we would never try to do any kind of mistakes like that ever again, because that will just be very destructive.

But I think the really good way to look at that, is not to interrupt you, but for the listeners. It's like whether you're looking at this through the lens of life or business, that's a really good perspective to have is that they're all just lessons, right?

Moreover, it becomes a habit that whatever new challenge or something happens on your way, you're looking at it from the excitement part, and if this is something new you need to figure out how to do it. Nothing less, not just, oh my god, I've never done it, I'll just stack somewhere in the middle, I don't know what to do. But on the contrary, you just look from the discovery perspective, and you're just like, oh, this is something new. I've never done it before. That's exciting. How would I do that?

What's cool about you saying that is, that I have an author-teacher friend who teaches principles on purpose about finding your purpose and living in your purpose. But one of the things that she says is to stop making decisions and start making discoveries.

Because when you start making discoveries, that's when the unfoldment happens and you get to advance and find your solutions. And I just thought like you just said discoveries that made me think, I had someone that gave me a one-liner recently that I liked.

From the discovery perspective when it comes to our business model, whatever we do, we just try it out first, and then if it works, we label it.

That's how we have been operating for the past four years. So we changed the business model right before COVID, which helped us a lot through the COVID time because we were pretty good and we adjusted it, also was a good rehearsal for the full scale because we were just continuing to do what we were already been doing and that also helped us. We just changed the market that we were operating in and so when after that went to Harvard, and they introduced us to this known-unknown, unknown-unknown, and known-known.

That's right. She was at Harvard, she says she finished some leadership there. 

So the business that you are in at the moment is your known-known, so it’s whatever you have. The unknown, known-unknown is something that you can find on YouTube, let's say predict what might happen and that's your risk management. And then goes unknown, those black swans that can happen in your life.

And it can change 360, whatever you're doing. And when I was listening to it, I realized that our life in Ukraine is constantly unknown. So whatever you're doing, whatever you're trying to plan the next day, everything can go like 360 and you can just sit and make your plan.

And again, that becomes a habit and you don't stress that much over it anymore because that's the reality and you just do it. And I was like, okay, this plan didn't work, let's have another plan and that also helps because I think, the most powerful skill that anyone can have in this era is this adjustability.

It's how we adjust, how we can change, it's how we can evolve. Because if you're not changing throughout the time, you're just stagnating and you're slowly dying, basically we need to evolve. And that's something that I've learned not only through books but through the experience of living. And I know that's something that works when you are simultaneously doing it.

That's powerful because we, as humans, don't naturally like change. But if you learn to leverage it and you learn adaptability, even through difficult times, you can have magical moments and find more of yourself and creativity opens up when you don't expect it.

I understand what you're saying, that's powerful. Let’s get into another question. what's a lesson, like you just shared one, but I want to ask in case another one pops up. What's a lesson or an aha? So either one, but it's a lesson or an aha that's up for you right now.

How Support and Collaboration Can Turn Dreams into Reality

You can be extremely smart, powerful, intelligent, inspiring, and so on. But if you don't have people around who will either challenge your ideas or support and make it happen together with you, you're nothing.

That is powerful because I'm putting myself in the position of a listener who may have dreams and goals or something that they're looking to do and maybe are sitting there afraid to do them or afraid to share them with other people because of judgment and things like that.

But where I'm going with what you said to someone who may be listening to this is to build a team around you and go for it. I think back to when I first wrote my book, Harness Your Inner CEO, and wrote it in a group. I joined a writer's group and so I had some support there, but I was writing it really in solitude.

I didn't even know if I was going to publish it and I was afraid to share this dream, this thing with the world. And then as I said yes to myself, and then I'm going to do this thing, I realized, I need an editor, I need a line, I need a developmental editor, I need a line editor, I need to hire a company to help me with design, and I need to figure out how to get it into the world. Then I met Lynae, I was like, I need a project manager, and then all of a sudden, my dream needed a team, and my team needed people with different skill sets. So I love what you said, and I just want to give that back to the listeners.

A lot of times, for your dreams to come true, you need to build a team around you. And I'd like to ask you, Anastasiia, what kind of thoughts do you have on that?

Building a Team That Challenges and Supports You

I am a hundred percent agree with you and I think the team that I have now is the most incredible people on earth. And I can vote for that, a hundred times and there is a tricky point to that, because if you will build a team of like-minded who are like, yeah, this idea is amazing, this idea is amazing, eventually you can lead yourself to a point that you are not seeing half of the picture because everyone is just starting to see it through the lens.

I guess also from the leadership perspective, like not the hierarchy, from the classical point of view, but still, there are these things that something would be kept untold and so on. But what I managed to do is that within our team, we're open to talking about anything good and bad. If we don't like any ideas, we can openly discuss them and challenge one another in terms of finding a solution that will work best.

And that is something that I cherish in the people that I work with, that they are not afraid to speak up for themselves. And if there are some problems, they would openly talk about it because there are things that happen every day. After all, we work as a people with people, we don't produce tangible things.

There are really rare moments when we produce some prints, something, or do actual events. Most of the things that we're producing are digital. So you cannot feel this moment of this is something that we got. And that also creates this feeling that you are not doing anything because you don't see the tangible results of what you're doing.

It's a tricky moment and so to have this constant discussion of what is good, what is bad, and of course, to cheer for one another when we're achieving something or we're completing the project, or if some problems are on the way, but again, together. That's something that you need to do because leadership is lonely, the higher you get, the lonelier you get because all the decisions are coming your way. But when you involve your team to make those decisions together, they feel that they're a part of it.

And they're willing to be part of it. They're willing to go the extra mile to make it happen because they know the value and they know what's coming next.

That's awesome. I believe that so much too. I think that, so many times we're afraid to look at what's negative or what might not work, and that sometimes we miss the biggest idea unfolding. And I'm a very big advocate of that too.

I'm like, let's go, let's talk about it all because it gives everyone on the team an empowered voice. And I learned too in the business of having a personal brand. If I make a decision, which I can, cause I'm like, hey, at the end of the day, Lynae would support me too if I was like, hey, it's my brand.

I want to do this but at the end of the day. I have a business partner, I have three people on our team, we have a whole bunch of contractors and you've seen me work too. Like I'd rather bring everyone together, let's brainstorm what works, and what doesn't work. I only say that to reinforce your point, sometimes the best idea comes from shared ideas.

Like you said, one person on your team might say that does not work. And then in the challenge of it, someone gets a light bulb to go off and throws out something that could be like the innovative thing that pushes you to the next level. So it's just such a cool thing to point out and to reinforce with the listeners is sometimes the thing, maybe don't want to have those weird conversations with family, friends, or business members.

But if you give it a safe place then people feel safe, you need psychological safety, right? But as long as the psychological safety is there, magical things happen. So I think that was a cool share. The next thing that I want to ask is if some leaders are listening to this or people with an idea that needs to leverage team thinking, how could this concept empower their journey forward?

Learning Through Mistakes

I think there is also another important part of making that happen is for the leader to allow this kind of discussion to happen, because everything goes from the leader. And for me, it took a while to get there, because when the world started, everything was manual.

I was making a lot of micromanagement just because I needed to support and hold everyone to make sure that we were not only doing the work, but everyone was all right, you cannot imagine when someone will be just out of context because they saw the news or something happened.

You cannot predict it because, in those days, the situation was changing extremely fast. And yes, there was a lot of micromanagement and everyone got used to this super tight content, the contact. And for me to have the separation moment when I can see and already allow the team to make the decision themselves. And that was a hard part, but I got lucky because I've traveled to the US to study and it was physically impossible to be with a team all the time because of the time difference because you'd think that I was at school all the time. 

So I needed to just step out and they were so proud of me being abroad, like representing us, we're going to do it like you do your thing, we're going to perform and that was an amazing experience because they've managed to take on board several new clients. They've launched the projects like they were doing just perfect, just an amazing job. And the most important thing for me when I came back, was not to jump back to the same route, but to still stay aside and allow them to continue working, and there was work in progress, and I cannot say that it was, just done perfectly. No, I was immediately jumping and I was like, yeah, I can keep here, I can help there. It's just this tiny thing and then I was just like, okay, I'm stepping out and allowing them to do it. 

And you will make mistakes, that's fine. We will figure it out after and so I think to allow this concept to work for a leader, you need to be okay with the fact that it's a learning process, which requires making mistakes.

But making mistakes is not something bad, it's something that you learn from. And the most important thing is that you learn from it. Not making it twice or three times in a row the same one. No, not a good thing, but to allow those mistakes to happen and to pinpoint what we do with it after and just to understand that it's the discovery, as we mentioned is a learning process is something that is not necessarily to be part of some frame that will work a hundred percent. No, you can have some baselines, but just improvise all the time. Adapt, adjust and then that is the moment when something magical is happening.

I love that. So we have time for one more question. Why are you passionate about the industry that you're in?

Finding Purpose Through Marketing and Social Impact

Because it allows me to work with different types of businesses and categories. As we're doing a lot of research, you have access and a huge amount of information and you understand how the world works because you see the patterns of human behaviors through different categories.

You understand why people behave that way, you understand how you can impact those decisions. And that's something that you're changing the customer experience of the whole industry, and that's exciting, that's the one part. Another is that we as an agency are in a position where we work with strategic partners, such as USAID and UNICEF on some projects such as anti-corruption projects, media literacy for kids, and different types of groups on the explosion risk management, and those kinds of things that are unfortunately on very high demand at the moment. And in that case, you can help and make the world a better place, by helping people in need.

And this is why we end up crying on calls because we feel our work so much. And that brings the purpose into what you're doing. You're not just making money but you're changing maybe for a tiny little bit, 0. 5%, but you're changing the world and that's exciting.

One last thing before we sign off, what's a little powerful or inspiring, empowering message that you'd like to share with the audience?

I think that the only thing that can stop you is in your head. Once you figure that out, you can do whatever you want.